The Mt Cattlin lithium mission is an working open pit mine positioned in Western Australia (WA).
The preliminary building of the Mt Cattlin lithium mine started in November 2009 whereas mining actions commenced in late 2016.
The mission was initially owned and operated Galaxy Assets till its merger with Orocober in August 2021.
Orocober modified its identify to Allkem and later to Arcadium Lithium in January 2024 by an equal merger with Livent.
An up to date technical report on the Mt Cattlin operations was accomplished in August 2023.
An underground feasibility examine of the mine evaluating optimised mining strategies for financial advantages, is anticipated in 2024.
Approval for underground mining will probably be thought of primarily based on future potential.
Undertaking location
The Mt Cattlin lithium mission is positioned roughly 2km north of the city of Ravensthorpe close to the south coast freeway in WA.
The property sits on the mining lease M74/244, which encompasses an space of roughly 1,830ha.
Geology and mineralisation
The mission is located throughout the Annabelle Volcanics of the Archaean age, which embrace metamorphosed mafic to intermediate tuff, agglomerate, and associated epiclastic rocks.
It’s positioned simply west of the Manyutup Tonalite.
The lithium-rich pegmatites are discovered within the type of subhorizontal sills surrounded by volcanic and intrusive rocks.
Lithium and tantalum mineralisation is primarily confined to those pegmatites.
Mt Cattlin lithium mission reserves
The confirmed and possible mineral reserves at Mt. Cattlin had been estimated at 7.1 million tonnes (t) grading 1.2% of lithium oxide (Li₂O) and 120ppm of tantalum pentoxide (Ta₂O₅), as of June 2023.
The contained metallic is estimated to be 84,000t of Li₂O and 1.9 million kilos of Ta₂O₅.
Mining methodology
The Mt Cattlin mine operations at the moment contain a traditional open-pit mining methodology of drilling, blasting, and hauling utilizing backhoe excavators and rear dump inflexible vehicles.
The drilling and blasting are carried out in 10m-high benches whereas the mining operations are carried out on 2m to 2.5m flitches.
The unique foremost pit of the Cattlin mine often known as the Dowling Pit, and the Southwest and the Southeast pits have been mined out.
The three pits are at the moment used for waste backfill.
Stage three of the 2NW pit is at the moment being mined and stage 4 is estimated to have two separate cutbacks.
The primary cutback has obtained approval, which is able to lead to continued spodumene manufacturing into 2026.
The mining fleet consists of 360t excavators, 140t and 90t vehicles, water carts, blasthole drill rig, and cell energy models.
Ore processing
The run of mine ore undergoes crushing in a single-toggle jaw crusher and secondary cone crusher and tertiary crushers.
The tertiary crusher product comprising +710µm materials is shipped to the coarse spiral concentrators whereas the -710µm materials is pumped to deslimes cyclones earlier than being fed to the fines spiral concentrators.
The focus from each coarse and fines spirals enters a Wilfley Shaker desk the place the tantalite product is additional separated for bagging and dispatch.
The waste materials from the coarse spirals reaches the ultrafine circuit for additional Li₂O restoration.
The coarse spirals waste is pumped to the moist high-intensity magnetic separator. The magnetic materials within the waste is shipped to rejects, whereas the non-magnetic materials is transferred to a reflux classifier to take away mica.
A screw feeder dewaters the classifier underflow and feeds it to the ultrafine dense media separation (DMS) feed bin.
The ultrafine DMS feed is blended right into a ferrosilicon slurry, which is then pumped by the ultrafine DMS cyclone cluster.
The resultant product is an underflow of spodumene focus from which ferrosilicon is recovered through sieve bends adopted by magnetic separation. The spodumene-containing focus is shipped to the second stage of DMS cyclones to additional improve the product by eradicating basalt.
The spodumene product from the secondary DMS undergoes moist screening and the +8mm materials is fed to the optical sorter to additional take away basalt and produce the ultimate spodumene focus.
The ultimate product is drained and loaded into vehicles and hauled by highway through the South Coast Freeway to Esperance Port for bulk cargo to prospects.
Website infrastructure
The transport route from Perth to Mt Cattlin is through Brookton Freeway, which covers a distance of 540km, or the Albany and South Coast highways, which span 690km.
Energy for the positioning is offered by a 7MW diesel era energy plant, which provides electrical energy to fulfill the positioning’s wants by an onsite energy distribution system.
The uncooked water wants of the processing plant are met from water bores positioned on the tenements. An adjoining dam is positioned close to the processing plant to obtain the uncooked water from the bores through pipelines.
Website course of water is sourced from the Northeast pit after which is pumped to the method plant.
Off-take agreements for spodumene focus at Mt Cattlin
The spodumene focus from Mt Cattlin operations is offered to Chinese language corporations Yahua Lithium and Sichuan Chengtun Lithium.
The offtake settlement with Yahua Lithium is for the availability of 120,000 tonnes every year (tpa) for a five-year interval between 2021 and 2025 whereas the three-year settlement with Chengtun Lithium was for 60,000tpa between 2021 and 2023.
Contractors concerned
Mining Plus, a mining companies supplier, was engaged in 2023 to organize a technical report for the Mt Cattlin operations.
Australia-based freight and cargo transportation companies supplier Qube Logistics was contracted to move the spodumene focus from the Mt Cattlin mine to the Esperance Port.