The Dawn of EV, page-1087

From the quarterly


• E25’s Butcherbird project ramping up to steady state manganese concentrate production as plant is continuously optimised over first 6 months of production. Production operating at off-taker product specification and focus is now on reaching nameplate rated throughput.

• Revenue per tonne trending to PFS levels subject to successful ramp-up to nameplate, freight rates normalising to historic levels and phasing-in of substantial smelter credits for low impurities anticipated from Q1 2022.


Process Plant Optimisation Works
Data acquired from the first several months of operation has provided invaluable feedback on plant design limitations and opportunities. Several areas have been identified for improvement and the Company is implementing a modification plan which is expected to de-bottleneck the plant resulting in increased throughput. The plan is expected to be rolled out before the end of the year to allow nameplate production to be reached before final engineering decisions are made in relation to the Stage 2 expansion, scheduled for completion in the first half of calendar 2022.
High clay content initially caused some clogging of the grizzly, thereby reducing achievable throughput rates. The incorporation of a scalping screen in front of the crusher resulted in significant improvements, and throughputs have increased towards nameplate. The scalping screen has also been separated from the crusher as it is inherently able to operate at a higher throughput than the crusher and therefore on a single shift basis will be able to produce more than the required crusher feed, allowing stocks to build up on the ROM and allowing drying time to further improve the processability of the material. It is anticipated this approach will improve resilience to wet weather conditions where short term weather events may otherwise exacerbate the clay/crusher issues. Having scalped, dried material on the ROM should mitigate this potential challenge.


First quarter had many teething problems and some unexpected cost blowouts, I think the worst is behind us. I think Justin is getting everything back on track, which I think he is more than capable of doing. I think we are oversold. I’m holding on until 2024!!!