Projects

Project description

The Molo deposit is located +-160 km southeast of Madagascar’s administrative capital (and port city) of Toliara, in the Tulear region. It is approximately 13 km NE of the local village of Fotadrevo. 

The proposed development of the Molo graphite project included the construction of a Greenfields open pit mine, a processing plant with a capacity of 240,000 tonnes of 8.05% graphite ore per annum, and all supporting infrastructure including water, fuel, power, tailings, buildings and permanent accommodation.

The Molo Project aimed to generate an average of 17 ktpa of saleable graphite products, for a 30-year life of mine, to be transported 220km by road to Fort Dauphin for containerised shipment to respective markets.

Services provided

The mining scope of the 240ktpa Feasibility Study was conducted by DRA Global and included geotechnical, mining, mining capital, operating and sustaining costing. 

Project highlights/ challenges

• The updated PFS results verified positive economics for Phase 1 of the Molo mine, which proposed a unique, fully-modular build approach and considered graphite prices at the time
• The updated PFS was based on Front End Engineering and Design (FEED), and Detailed Engineering studies as opposed to a Basic Engineering study
• Phase 1 included a fully operational and sustainable graphite mine with a permanent processing plant capable of producing approximately 17,000 tonnes per annum (“tpa”) of high-quality SuperFlake™ graphite concentrate per year, with a mine life of 30 years
• The Molo Project had the lowest capital mine cost (CAPEX) of any new and competing graphite project at that time (a build cost of US$18.4 million)
• The main challenges to the implementation of this project were political risk, government commitment and social and labour issues all of which were successfully addressed