Mount Cattlin Mine

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This is Galaxy Resources Lithium/Tantalum project and mine.

Mt Cattlin

The Mt Cattlin Spodumene Mine, located approximately 2 km north of the town of Ravensthorpe in Western Australia, is owned by Galaxy Resources Limited. Galaxy Resources holds a series of tenements surrounding and including the mining lease M74/12, which contains the majority of the spodumene (LiAlSi2O6) resource identified to date. The proposed Project involves the mining and processing of pegmatite ore to produce a spodumene concentrate and a tantalum by-product. Ore processing will be at a rate of 1 million tpa at an average grade of 1.1% Li2O and will produce approximately 137,000 tpa of spodumene concentrate at 6.0% Li2O and 56,000 lbs pa of contained tantalum (Ta2O5) in concentrate.

Spodumene concentrate will be transported by road train to Esperance to be shipped out through the Port of Esperance to Zhangjiagang Port in China. Tantalum concentrate would be transported to Perth and packaged in 200 litre drums before shipment in containers from Fremantle.

The spodumene concentrate will be converted to lithium carbonate at the Company's facility close to the Zhangjiagang Port in Jiangsu Province. Zhangjiagang City is located in the geometrical centre of the Yangtze River Delta, Jiangsu Province, one of the important economic open areas within one hours drive of Shanghai. The chemical facility will produce a total of 17,000 tpa of battery grade lithium carbonate. The site has been selected due to lower associated capital and operating costs, and its close proximity to the strategic growing battery markets in Asia.

Mining

The mine is based on simple, risk free open-pit mining and processing of 15 million tonnes of ore over a 16 year period from the Cattlin Creek ore body. The ore body being flat lying allows mining to proceed at a constant strip ratio once the ore is uncovered. Mining will be carried out using excavator and truck operations, delivering to a conventional crushing and HMS gravity recovery circuit.

Contract mining will be used for grade control drilling and earthmoving operations (drilling, blasting, load, haul and ancillary work) for the open-cut mining operation. The initial pit design encompasses existing measured and indicated resources and has been defined as the Dowling pit.

Processing

The processing plant is located to the west of the proposed Dowling pit, approximately 2 kilometres north-west of the Ravensthorpe townsite. The plant consists of a four-stage crushing circuit producing a -6mm product from ROM ore at a treatment rate of 1 million tonnes per annum. The crushing plant runs on day shift only providing feed to an ore bin which feeds the concentrator on a continuous 24 hour per day basis.

The concentrator consists of reflux classifier, dual size stream, two stages of Heavy (or Dense) Media Separation (HMS) cyclones, with mechanical attritioning of the intermediate sink product. The final spodumene concentrate will be stacked on a pad adjacent to the plant area, drained and hauled by road to Esperance for shipment in bulk. Coarse waste HMS plant float material will be stacked adjacent to the plant area, and hauled by truck to mined out areas of the pit(s) as back-fill.

The HMS pre-screen undersize (-0.5mm) is treated by gravity separation (spiral classifiers) to recover tantalite and residual spodumene. Tantalite concentrates will be trucked to contractors in Perth for dressing and packaging in 200 litre drums for shipment by container from Fremantle. A last stage grinding and flotation step at the end of the process recovers and returns spodumene to the final product. Tantalite circuit tailings and other plant spillage streams will be directed to a thickener for process water recovery. Thickener underflow will be pumped to a tailings dam approximately 500 metres from the plant.

Power will be provided by dedicated diesel generators, and process water will be sourced from bores located on the tenements. The workforce is expected to be domiciled in Ravensthorpe and/or Hopetoun.

“With a mine life of 16 years and considerable resource upside thanks to the significant exploration potential of our neighbouring tenements - Galaxy's future looks assured.”

The key process steps are:

•Open pit mining
•Crushing and screening to -6mm
•Reflux Classifier to remove mica flakes
•Two stage heavy media separation (HMS) in two separate size streams
•Gravity concentration (spirals and wet tables) of tantalite minerals
•Grinding and flotation of - 0.5mm stream to remove residual spodumene
•Contract dressing and packaging of tantalite concentrates (in Perth)
•Production of 137,000 tonnes of spodumene concentrate @ 6.0% Li2O
•Shipment of bulk concentrate through Esperance to Zhangjiagang in China

Mt Cattlin was put on care and maintenance in 2013.

Reference for information:
www.galaxyresources.com.au/pro_raven_mt_cattlin.html

www.galaxyresources.com.au/projects_ravensthorpe.html

www.galaxyresources.com.au/pro_mt_cattlin_progress.html

Reference for location(Bonzle):
bonzle.com/c/a?a=p&p=260200&m=25&c=1&x=120%2E0249029215...