An increase in plant availability and utilisation has resulted in West Perth-based junior Walkabout Resources increasing production at its Lindi Jumbo graphite project in Tanzania.
An increase in plant availability and utilisation has resulted in West Perth-based junior Walkabout Resources increasing production at its Lindi Jumbo graphite project in Tanzania.
Average production during August exceeded its theoretical break-even point, 50 tonnes per day, with one 24-hour period yielding a record 94 bags of dry graphite concentrate.
Nameplate capacity at Lindi Jumbo is 110 bags per day.
“Exceeding the theoretical breakeven output point is an important milestone to reach during the ramp-up phase of the project,” Walkabout managing director and chief executive officer Andrew Cunningham said.
“Lindi Jumbo is already demonstrating the benefits of its very high-grade deposit thereby operating at the lowest end of the cost curve while achieving a higher basket price due to its greater proportion of coarse flake graphite products.
“We look forward to further increasing our production over the remainder of the quarter and shipping more high-quality product to our global customers.”
Walkabout, which has a market cap of $65.78 million, also provided insight into plant downtime at Lindi Jumbo, which at times provided a challenge during ramp-up in July and August.
“The main source of plant downtime has related to instability in the filter and drying sections of the plant with fugitive graphite dust emissions infiltrating and causing electrical shorting of critical components within the circuit of the burner unit,” the company said.
“This is being addressed by both eliminating the sources of dust emissions, upgrading the electrical control systems and relocating these systems aways from high potential dust areas.
“During much of August, the filtration section had been operating with only one of its two filter presses because of a need to replace an electrical component.
“Given the excess capacity in the backend plant, production has still exceeded plans.
“These improvements are already resulting in greater backend plant availability and throughput.”
Presently, purity and recovery levels at Lindi Jumbo are either on par or above expectations tabled in the project’s definitive feasibility study.
Moving forward, the graphite developer said it aims to increase its daily output to the nameplate capacity of 110 tonnes per day – a target it feels can be achieved by a larger average feed rate, coupled by optimal plant availability and utilisation.
Walkabout shares last changed hands at 10 cents, up 2 per cent as of 10.31am WST.
