International Graphite (ASX:IG6) has signed a $2 million financial assistance agreement with the Western Australian Government.
Under the Collie Industrial Transition Fund, the company will apply the $2 million over a two-year term for various feasibility activities.
These activities include metallurgical testwork, flowsheet development and plant design, to assess the technical, environmental and financial feasibility of producing Western Australian mine-to-market battery anode materials in a purpose-built facility at Collie.
International Graphite, which has a market capitalisation of $10.83 million, says once the activities have been completed, the funding will be made available for drawdown to match its expenditure over the term of the agreement.
CEO Andrew Worland says the state government is showing support for the development of critical minerals and downstream processing initiatives in Western Australia.
“With all our grants now contracted, we have a level of funding certainty for feasibility activities across our Springdale and Collie mine-to-market business plan,” Worland says.
“We expect, subject to the imminent completion of the front end engineering and design study, that stage one of the Collie Micronising Facility will be fully funded to mechanical completion.”
The Collie facility is the centre of the company’s research and development program for battery anode material and will use third-party fine flake graphite as feedstock until its Springdale graphite resource comes online.
In the future, the company expects that micronised and spheroidized graphite products will be further purified and coated at Collie to produce a finished battery anode material product suitable for the manufacture of lithium-ion battery anodes.
International Graphite is an emerging supplier of processed graphite products, including active anode materials for lithium ion batteries in electric vehicles, defence applications and global energy transformation.
Write to Aaliyah Rogan at Mining.com.au
Images: International Graphite
