Premier African Minerals Limited has announced that an engineering audit team has completed an extensive on-site technical audit at its Zulu Lithium and Tantalum Project. The audit focused specifically on pumping and pipeline performance, as well as water and mass balance assessments.
The Zulu Lithium and Tantalum Project, located in Fort Rixon in Matabeleland South, remains one of the most advanced lithium exploration projects in Zimbabwe and continues to be a key focus of Premier African Minerals’ investment and operational strategy.
In a statement, the company said: “An engineering audit team have just completed their work on site conducting a comprehensive technical audit, focused on pumping and pipeline performance as well as water and mass balance assessments.” The team is expected to complete a high-level interim engineering audit report in the next few days and a full report within the coming week or so.
The company added the forthcoming report would provide a detailed review of the entire processing plant. “This report will cover the entire plant, including those elements that may be utilised for the secondary plant configuration, and will provide observations and recommendations concerning the current flotation plant.”
Premier African Minerals said the findings from the audit, combined with ongoing discussions with its prepayment and offtake partner, will play a crucial role in determining the plant’s operational readiness.
“The results of the report, together with the outcome of current ongoing commercial discussions with the company’s prepayment and offtake partner over their arrangements with Premier, are expected to have a material bearing on the company’s assessment of the current flotation plant having the short-term potential, as reported previously, to meet its operational objectives of achieving sustainable commercial production at both the required grade and tonnage. The company remains confident that, given adequate time and resources, the current flotation plant will achieve its planned design capacity.”
Mr Graham Hill, Premier’s Managing Director, noted the importance of the audit in ensuring system balance and operational stability.
“We have recently reported on the engineering audit that is currently ongoing. The intention of the audit is to look into all those parts of the process plant that connect all of the major plant equipment.”
“My conviction has been that in order to achieve stable and consistent operations, all parts of the plant need to be balanced in terms of mass and water flows. This is true for the existing flotation plant as well as for the Secondary Flotation Plant. The audit will also be making suggestions and comments as far as the existing flotation plant is concerned. Current comments discussed show that the audit team are coming up with practical suggestions based on professional engineering assessments.”
Mr Hill expressed optimism that the audit’s findings, coupled with ongoing improvements, would enhance the plant’s performance and readiness for production. He added that with the recent changes to the current plant and recommendations for improvement, the company remained hopeful of achieving pre-production readiness soon.
“With that in mind, the Secondary Flotation Plant installation and commissioning would be supplementary, but it is felt that being able to quickly bring the Secondary Flotation Plant to pre-production readiness provides the best opportunity for making the existing plant fully production ready and able to provide production benefits,” he said.
Meanwhile, on Thursday the mining house adjourned its General Meeting with plans to reconvene on 7 November.
The company said the adjournment is intended to facilitate further commercial discussions with its principal shareholder regarding resolutions that include the proposed disapplication of pre-emption provisions in the company’s Articles of Association.
The firm recently warned that failure to pass the proposed resolutions “may have a material impact on all shareholders and on the assets of the Company.”-herald
