Walkabout Resources has announced that is successfully concentrating ore at its 40 ktpa Lindi Jumbo graphite mine in Tanzania, as commissioning activities continue to ramp up and the mine advances to become one of the top five natural graphite producers outside of China.

Walkabout’s Managing Director and CEO Andrew Cuningham said, “Ore feed to the concentrator circuit at Lindi Jumbo is a huge step forward in Walkabout’s journey to becoming a major player within the natural flake graphite industry.

“It is the culmination of more than six years of feasibility, procurement, engineering, construction, and commissioning work undertaken by the Lindi Jumbo team and its contractors. We have achieved this milestone with a strong focus on safety, capital cost controls, partnering with the local community, support of our loyal contractors and the minimisation of shareholder dilution,” he said.

“The strategic importance of Lindi Jumbo is reinforced by China’s recent introduction of export controls on graphite and its products, and the increased attractiveness of both the US and European markets supported by the US Inflation Reduction Act and the EU Critical Raw Materials Act”.

Commissioning activities through the various process modules at Lindi Jumbo have been undertaken over several months as each area of the plant moved to handover status.

The commissioning team, comprising Jinpeng specialists and Lindi Jumbo technical operations and graphite plant specialists, is currently focused on wet commissioning and achieving overall concentrator throughput that meets the design of 40kpta.

With full grid power available to the plant, completion of dry commissioning at the concentrator circuit was enabled and wet commissioning has commenced. 

All of the necessary first fills and reagents (rods and grinding media for the pebble and attritioning mills, frother, collector for the flotation circuit and flocculant for the tailings) have been delivered to site in bulk, in advance of first ore feed to the concentrator circuit and the wet commissioning of the Tailings Storage Facility (TSF).

Wet commissioning so far, has been focused on testing the various pieces of equipment under load, identifying any problems that might arise, rectifying these and the checking the integration between the various pieces of equipment and control systems needed to run the plant on a continuous basis. 

To date, the equipment within the circuit has performed well with no fatal flaws identified and all defects rectified immediately where possible, or at the end of each test-run/shift.

Ore has now successfully moved through the entire concentrating circuit to produce an unscreened wet concentrate ready for processing through the filter presses and commissioning of the burner and dryer.

Problems with the consistency of fuel supply to the burner that will generate heat for the rotary dryer has slowed commissioning progress of the back-end plant. A representative of the company that manufactured the burner and carried out its factory acceptance testing is on site and will oversee the commissioning of the burner and necessary training of the responsible operations team.

Its successful commissioning will also allow for the wet commissioning of the screening and bagging circuits.

A production blast occurred on 26 April 2024. The blast was within the main high-grade zone of the deposit containing super high-grade zones that run the length of the deposit.