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Birimian focusing on improving Goulamina recovery.

Ryan D. Long on LinkedIn
Recovery rates of lithium concentrate projects
Birimian focusing on improving Goulamina recovery.

• Published on May 16, 2019

Ryan D. Long
Ryan D. Long

Director of Mining at Edison Group - Sharinginsights from the Global Mining Industry
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Birimian Limited (BGS.ASX) is focusing its next work programme on improving its recovery rate at its 100%-owned Goulamina spodumene project, located in the Bougouni region of Mali. Goulamina has a recovery rate of 70.4%, which places it in the lower end of its peer group for recoveries, which averages 75% but contains projects reporting recoveries as high as 89%.
Birimian is planning to undertake a revised metallurgical test work programme at Goulamina to improve its recovery rate. The first stage will be testing high pressure grinding rolls (HPGR) and will be followed by reflux classification and flotation programs. If positive results are returned, this work will feed into an optimised process flowsheet and metallurgical recovery estimate that potentially uses HPGR. We would expect this work to be part of a trade off study that examines the economic benefit of increased recoveries compared to the increased cost of using HPGR.
Improvement’s in the recovery rate could have a big impact on the already positive economics at Goulamina. A pre-feasibility study at the project, announced 04 July 2018, returned a post-tax NPV10 of US$490m with a pre-tax IRR of 49.5%, assuming an average spodumene concentrate price of US$666/t. This is a reasonable base case price assumption as Mineral Resources Limited (MIN.ASX) recently reported (01 May 2019) that it expected a price of US$682/t for the sale of its spodumene concentrate from the Mt Marion Mine, located in Boulder, Western Australia, during the June 19 quarter.
Higher recoveries would mean that Birimian is able to extract more metal from its deposit and therefore would therefore have more product to sell. Whether this would be worth the increased cost associated with HPGR will come out in the trade off study, but as the company already sits at the lower end of the opex curve at US$269/t, compared to an average for its concentrate producing peer group of US$338/t, higher recoveries could be an important development for the business.