Pilbara Minerals has announced it is considering selling between 20 per cent and 49 per cent of its Pilgangoora lithium project, as it declared commercial production from the processing plant.
Pilbara Minerals has announced it is considering selling between 20 per cent and 49 per cent of its Pilgangoora lithium project, as it declared commercial production from the processing plant.
In a statement, Pilbara said it had received interest from third parties in regards to acquiring a minority stake in its fully-owned project, which Pilbara plans to invest a total of $646 million into.
The company said it would consider selling a stake to a third party, if they provide additional value to the project through additional financing support, marketing support, or technical capability including potential downstream processing.
It also said it would also consider a range of other partnering arrangements.
“(These other partnering arrangements include) offtake arrangements for the stage 3 expansion, or the creation of a newly established joint venture to develop a second chemical conversion facility,” the company said.
It said the existing downstream joint venture with South Korean-based POSCO would remain separate and be excluded from the minority partnering process.
In November, Mineral Resources sold a 50 per cent stake of its Wodgina lithium plant to Albermale, in a deal worth around $1.6 billion.
The Chris Ellison-led MinRes is planning a three-train processing facility at Wodgina, with a capacity of 750,000 dry metric tonnes of 6 per cent spodumene concentrate per annum.
Pilbara is looking for funding to progress its stage 2 and stage 3 Pilgangoora expansions, which have capital cost requirements of around $231 million and $226 million respectively.
Stage 1 cost approximately $189 million.
Yesterday, Pilbara said a scoping study revealed there is a potential to increase the processing capacity at the Pilgangoora by 50 per cent with a stage three expansion.
The stage three study estimated that Pilgangoora would deliver average annual production of approximately 1.2 million tonnes of spodumene concentrate and 1.1 million pounds of tantalite concentrate over a 15-year life of mine.
Shares in the miner surged 15 per cent to close trade today at 80 cents each, after it had reported production in excess of 111,999 dry metric tonnes (dmt) of spodumeme concentrate for the first six months of its stage 1 operations.
The company said it forecasts production of between 47,000 and 52,000 dmt for the March quarter, even with the impact of Tropical Cyclone Veronica in over the past week, compared to 47,859 dmt in the December quarter.
Macquarie Capital and Allen & Overy were appointed to assist in the partnering process.
