The latest figures come from an eight-hole geotechnical diamond drill campaign completed between May and July last year to assess the strength of the rock in a bid to set appropriate pit wall angles for the company’s proposed mine pit design. The significant 60.1m intercept includes a 24m section going 39.86 per cent TGC from 12.6m, in addition to a deeper 17m segment grading 36.95 per cent TGC from 43.1m to the end of the hole.
Shares in the company surged more than 14 per cent following this morning’s announcement to touch 20c during intraday trading after a previous close of 17.5c on Friday.
Additional drilling highlights show a 60m section going 30.46 per cent TGC from surface to end of hole including 4.6m at a whopping 42.27 per cent TGC from 11m and 6.5m grading 40.95 per cent from 53.5m.
Management says several significant intercepts greater than 40 per cent TGC were reported, while two individual assays of higher that 50 per cent were also recorded. Further notable results reveal a 50m section at 30.88 per cent TGC from surface including 10.9m grading 42.67 per cent. Another 54.3m hit returned 23.67 per cent TGC from 5.9m including 15.1m going 42.19 per cent from 40.2m.
Of the 471.3m drilled, 92 per cent of the intercepts recorded significant hits, meaning the initial pit walls of the project will be constructed in high-grade mineralisation. Management believes the selected initial mining areas have targeted only a small proportion of the available mineral resource and it has isolated the highest grades at the lowest strip ratio.
In the space of just more than 18 months, the company has delivered a high-grade mineral resource of 229 million tonnes at an incredible 28.9 per cent TGC.
Sarytogan Graphite managing director Sean Gregory said: “These thick high-grade results, in many cases over the entire length of 60m drillholes drilled into the proposed initial pit walls, highlight the low strip-ratio and exceptionally high-grade mineralisation available at Sarytogan. This is another important input to the Pre-Feasibility Study on track for completion no later than Q3 2024.”
The company recently engaged GR Engineering Services to progress its PFS and it will evaluate two main flowsheet options in chemical and thermal purification. Management says the exceptional results in thermal purification and spheroidization have firmly placed it as the favoured option, however the development of the chemical flowsheet option is also continuing in Germany.
Drilling results received early last year confirmed the near-surface nature of the deposit, with assays of 26.8m grading 30.4 per cent TGC from surface and ending in mineralisation. Additional wide, shallow results show 47.6m at 31.3 per cent TGC, also from surface, including 13.9m going 40.2 per cent TGC, in addition to a 6.8m hit grading 37 per cent in the same hole.
Late last year, Sarytogan produced its first spheroidized graphite, which is the final flowsheet element needed to produce uncoated spherical purified graphite (USPG) and ultra-high purity fines (UHPF) for use in lithium-ion batteries and other related markets.
