Modern Mining June 2018

MINING News

Aukam processing plant commissioned and has a current capacity of 650 tons per annum. Construction is already underway for the installation of a larger mill with an 11 000 ton per annum capacity.

grab samples (2 to 30 kg) from across the stockpiled dumps. Aukam was established in 1940 and subsequently produced approximately US$30 million of graphite at today’s prices. The site is located on approximately 27 870 ha in southern Namibia close to the port city of Luderitz and is estimated to con- tain a significant amount of high grade, vein type graphitic material. The property hosts three underground adits that were mined periodically between 1940 and 1974.  items of earthmoving equipment. Prospect says it is excited about moving the Arcadia project into the development and build phase. Since the updated off-take agreement was announced on 4 April 2018, the company is now in complete control of the design, build, commissioning and financing of the mine and concentrate plant. The company expects to secure more than US$55 million in funding for the first phase of Arcadia that will see it pro- duce lithium concentrates for export by 30 June 2019. 

Next Graphite, co-licence joint interest holder in the Aukam vein graphite project in Namibia, reports that the processing plant at the project has been commis- sioned successfully and an initial shipment of graphite concentrate has been made. The plant was constructed between December 2017 and March 2018, with ini- tial throughput and optimisation reached during March and April 2018. To date, the plant has generated 5 tons of graph- ite concentrate grading between 88 and 95 % Carbon as Graphite (Cg), of which 2,5 tons has been shipped to Perpetuus Carbon Technologies for the manu- facture of graphenes to be used in the automobile and bicycle tyre industry. Next Graphite’s joint venture partner, Gratomic Inc, is currently in collaboration with Perpetuus to build on Perpetuus’capa- bility to initially provide approximately 550 tons of surfaced modified graphenes per annum to support the volumes required by the tyre manufacturing industry. The Aukam processing plant uses a sim- ple crushing, grinding and flotation system

Graphite feed for the Aukam process- ing plant is obtained from screening and sorting of stockpiles produced by histori- cal and recent mining. An average feed grade of 56,29 % Cg with a range of 41,55 to 63,87 % Cg was determined from ten

JRG to undertake earthmoving at Arcadia ASX-listed Prospect Resouces has appointed J.R. Goddard (Pvt) Ltd (JRG) as the earthmov- ing contractor for the Arcadia lithiumproject near Harare in Zimbabwe. JRG is expected to begin mobilisation of plant and equipment immediately and to break ground in the coming weeks.

According to Prospect, JRG has been at the forefront of the construction industry in Zimbabwe since 1982. The company is a specialist in large-scale earthworks, civil con- struction and infrastructure development. It currently owns and operates 120 major