AMN - MALI: Birimian confident of early 2020 start-up

Birimian Limited says first production from its US$199 million Goulamina lithium project in southwest Mali is being targeted for the first quarter of 2020 subject to achieving remaining key development milestones.

Speaking at the Paydirt 2018 Africa Down Under mining conference in Perth, chief executive officer Greg Walker said the company had adopted a five-step schedule to get its 2 million tonnes per annum Goulamina project into production in the next 19 months.

“We have made substantial progress with Goulamina this year but now need to complete environmental and mine approval processes, feasibility and definitive engineering studies, and secure suitable project financing.

“Binding offtake agreements also need to be finalised and signed and we have a well-detailed construction, commissioning and production ramp-up schedule to insert this new Mali lithium mine into the global lithium supply chain,” he said.

“We are favoured by a very strong Mali Government which has a track record of facilitating and rapidly permitting mineral development projects so we are confident of meeting our March 2020 first production target.

“Goulamina is one of the world’s largest undeveloped high-grade lithium deposits and our updated pre-feasibility study has produced very strong project metrics.

“The PFS has confirmed that Goulamina can be profitably developed as a large-scale, low cost, hard rock lithium mine with a 16-year operating life for total output of 362,000 tpa of 6% lithium oxide spodumene concentrate.

“Independent analysts have assigned a rating to Goulamina of the fifth lowest cost ex-mine gate hard rock lithium project worldwide so it sits at right end of the lithium mine cost curve.”

Greg Walker said the equities market had been hard in recent months on lithium stocks but the project’s NPV had increased five-fold to sit at A$920 million, and its mineral resource of 103.3 million tonnes at 1.34% Li2O remains open along strike and at depth.

He said the project had enjoyed a substantial (666%) increase in the size of the deposit and value of the project in the past 20 months and despite the fact its projected output would represent 15% of current global lithium concentrate supply, this profile was yet to be reflected in the on-market value of the company.

He said Goulamina’s latest studies pointed to a  C1 cash cost of US$281/tonne and an all in sustaining cost of US$319/tonne with a payback period once production commenced of only 2.6 years.

www.birimian.com