Battery metals exploration and development company Metals Australia on Thursday announced the appointment of mining engineer Paul Ferguson as CEO to drive the development of the Lac Rainy graphite project, in Quebec, Canada.

Ferguson has extensive project development experience working in Canada during a 30-year career in the global resources sector.

He spent nine years working in Canada with ExxonMobil, where he was responsible for building and operating a large-scale oil sands mining and processing project. During this period, he also took various projects through the feasibility, design, and construction stages to become successful, large-scale operations.

Ferguson is joining Metals Australia at a time that the company is evolving from a junior explorer to the predevelopment phase of its Lac Rainy project.

Early scoping study work in 2020 is based on an indicated and inferred mineral resource of about 13.3-million tonnes of graphite at a grade of 11.5% and included an openpit shell, which contained an estimated 9.6-million tonnes of graphite at a high grade of 13.1%.

“While the mineral inventory generated by the scoping study demonstrated an initial life of operation of around 14 years, there is significant potential for that mine life to be extended by growing the Lac Rainy resource. In particular, I note the initial resource and mine life was generated from just two defined pit shells (combined 1 km of strike) in two separate areas of the Carheil Trend at Lac Rainy, covering just 1.6 km. Analysis of the drilling indicates potential for the resource to expand in all directions, including in the 600 m gap between the two pit shells used in the scoping study,” said Ferguson.

He said Lac Rainy would be advanced on multiple fronts, the first area of work being a drilling programme to extend and increase the current mineral resource and to gain a better appreciation of the untapped potential of the new regional graphitic trends.

The second parallel work front is to move the original scoping study through to the prefeasibility study stage.