ASX junior Altura Mining has stockpiled crushed ore for the first time at its flagship lithium project in the Pilbara and says it’s on track to make its first lithium concentrate shipment in July 2018.
Altura told the stock exchange on May 22 it had completed commissioning on the crushing circuit at its Altura Lithium site at Pilgangoora, near Port Hedland in north-west WA.
“The commissioning milestone marks a significant step for the Altura team,” Aultura managing director James Brown said.
“We have to remember this was a greenfields site that required the procurement and installation of all infrastructure. I am very confident of our team’s ability to commission a processing plant with both dense media separation and flotation circuits and transform us into a producer.”
Crushed ore is now being stockpiled, ready to be fed into the wet plant, which is currently in the commissioning phase.
The wet plant’s high pressure grinding roller and ball mill are currently the focus of commissioning efforts, Altura said.
The next priorities will be commissioning the site’s dense media separation modules, the classification circuit, and then the product upgrade and load out circuits.
Along with the commissioning of various aspects of the plant, site management are also focused on assembling the plant operations and maintenance teams, Altura said, in line with its owner-operator model.
The company expects to complete all commissioning by the end of June 2018, at which time it will ramp up lithium concentrate production for a targeted first shipment in July 2018.