Key points:
- Tirupati Graphite shares surged 14.6% after shipping its first CFS system.
- The CFS will reduce the company’s operating costs by eliminating key flotation stages.
- Furthermore, the company will cement its position as a low-cost graphite producer.
Tirupati Graphite PLC (LON: TGR) shares surged 14.6% after revealing that it will be shipping the first commercial-grade Column Flotation System (CFS) with a 1.5 Mt per hour production capacity.
The company will install the CFS at Madagascar’s 9,000 tpa Vatomina graphite plant. The system was developed after Tirupati launched a pilot version in July 2021 via the Tirupati Graphene & Mintech Research Centre (TGMRC).
Tirupati’s CFS has significant advantages over the conventional flotation cell technologies used by most graphite miners in that it reduces the power consumed during the floatation process by approximately 40%.
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The CFS also eliminates corrosion and wear during the flotation process, reducing production downtimes, maintenance intervals and costs. The system also reduces the number of flotation stages to achieve high-purity graphite levels.
Tirupati will use the CFS in its upcoming expansion projects, including the upcoming 18,000 tpa Sahamamy expansion set for completion at the end of Q2 2022 and the following on 54,000 tpa of additional production capacity be constructed in Madagascar by 2024.
The new system eliminated three of the four flotation stages of producing commercial-grade graphite and will deliver significant commercial and operational improvements to Tirupati.
Shishir Poddar, Tirupati Graphite’s Executive Chairman, said: “Global flake graphite demand continues to grow driven by the acceleration in the transition to electric mobility and growth in other flake graphite consumption arenas such as flame retardant and thermal management applications. As such, we are increasingly confident in our strategy of rapidly increasing our production capacity.”
Adding:
“Our dedicated research centre in India which is the technological backbone supporting the Group’s operations has enabled us to commercialise our Column Flotation System with many unique features allowing us to further reduce our costs and increase efficiencies at our primary flake graphite operations in Madagascar, downstream speciality graphite operations in India and, in due course, our primary flake graphite projects in Mozambique as well.”
Tirupati Graphite share price.
Tirupati Graphite shares surged 14.57% to trade at 86.50p, rising from Wednesday’s closing price of 75.50p.