Siviour: Is this Australia’s next graphite producer?
Tom Parker1 hour ago
The Siviour project in South Australia.
Australia produced
graphite once upon a time but there are no active local producers. Renascor Resources is one company looking to change this.
Renascor’s
Siviour battery anode material (BAM) project in South Australia is rapidly advancing towards first production, with the company to commence mining before a downstream plant is brought online thereafter.
Renascor managing director David Christensen said upstream development would be the company’s initial focus as that’s where he sees market demand.
“The gap in (graphite) material right now is really on the upstream and that’s largely because the customer base has grown significantly on the anode side and on the midstream processing side to feed battery companies, but the mines haven’t caught up,” he told
Australian Resources & Investment.
Renascor aims to produce flake graphite concentrates from its Siviour open pit mine and processing plant on the Eyre Peninsula, before further processing at a separate facility would deliver a midstream purified spherical graphite (PSG) product to support battery anode manufacturing.
Anodes are one of two electrodes that make up a lithium-ion battery, with cathodes – made up of metals such as lithium, nickel and cobalt – being the other electrode.
“If we see where we are with graphite right now, China produces two thirds of the world’s graphite but processes 100 per cent of the graphite that goes into anodes and then produces about 90 per cent of the anodes,” Christensen said.
“And they’ve really built up their processing capacity, both on the midstream … and on the anode side, and for that matter on the battery and the EV (electric vehicle) side as well.
“There even maybe overcapacity there, but there’s undercapacity certainly in China on the flake graphite, so China has now become a net importer of flake graphite, and that’s really what’s causing the increase in the price. The reason they’re a net importer is because they need to feed the lithium-ion battery sector.”
Renascor’s recent achievements include completing a $70 million equity raise in December and receiving Program for Environment Protection and Rehabilitation (PEPR) approval from the South Australian Government in November.
The immediate objectives for Renascor are the completion of a battery anode materials study, converting non-binding offtake agreements into binding and solidifying the company’s financing. Then Renascor would be able to make a final investment decision.
Christensen said if Renascor can commence constructing the Siviour mine at the end of 2023, then commissioning could commence at the back end of 2024, with production to follow.
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