South Star Battery Metals Announces Production and Shipment of First Graphite Concentrates and Operational Update for the Santa Cruz Graphite Mine
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VANCOUVER, British Columbia, May 07, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — South Star Battery Metals Corp. (“South Star” or the “Company”) (TSXV: STS) (OTCQB: STSBF), is pleased to announce the successful production and shipment of the first container of natural flake graphite concentrates, as well provide an operational update for the Santa Cruz Graphite Mine in Bahia, Brazil. The maiden shipment comprised of 20 bulk bags of graphite concentrates is sealed and now awaiting logistics for delivery to the United States. The Santa Cruz Mine is now officially the first new commercial graphite production in the Americas since 1996, and the Company is poised to become a critical supplier of high-quality graphite to global markets.
Santa Cruz is fully licensed and permitted for up to 50,000 tonnes of concentrates per year (“tpy”). This significant milestone underscores South Star’s leadership in advancing secure, scalable, and sustainable graphite production in the West. South Star is committed to supporting the traditional industrial markets, while also strengthening critical supply chains for defense, stationary storage and the broader energy transition.
Richard Pearce, CEO of South Star commented,
We are excited and proud to deliver this important milestone for the Phase 1 Santa Cruz operations, bringing 15 years of vision and hard work to life.
“Our team has completed the construction and delivery of the first product with zero loss-time incidents (“LTIs”). It’s a real testament to our team’s dedication, discipline, hard work and focus with 887 days and over 389,650 manhours completed through April 30, 2025 with no LTIs. I would like to thank our team, clients and investors for their continued support of South Star and Santa Cruz.”
Mr. Pearce continued,
The global landscape is increasingly emphasizing the strategic importance of a secure, resilient critical minerals supply chain and industrial production capacity.
“Provenance and security of supply increasingly matter. South Star is a first mover in the graphite space in the West with low cost, scalable, long-life assets in Tier 1 jurisdictions and an experienced management team that delivers phased, modular production. We believe this will allow us to be uniquely positioned in the West and increasingly differentiate ourselves in the marketplace as a team who delivers production. Santa Cruz produces a wide variety of coarse to fine natural flake graphite concentrates ranging from 82% to 96% graphitic carbon content. Once Phase 1 production is fully ramped, we will be working quickly to move downstream into value-add products, as well as start design for expanding Santa Cruz production.”
Operational Update
Santa Cruz is ramping up Phase 1 production to deliver approximately 3,500 – 4,000 metric tonnes (“t”) of graphite concentrates in 2025 and increasing to a target of 10,000 mt in 2026. Currently, the Phase 1 plant is averaging approximately 92% of the mechanical availability with throughput ramping up to the target of 30 tonnes per hour of ore over the near-term. Mine operations have generally confirmed the mine plan of 2.8% to 3.5% graphite carbon (“Cg”) and an overall waste to ore strip ratio of 1:1. Ore variability remains low, and the flake size distribution is confirming the previously announced flake size distribution of 65% coarse (+80 mesh) and 35% fines (-80 mesh) material. There are approximately 36,000 tonnes of ore on the ROM pad ready to process. The key priorities of the continued ramp up over the next three months are focused on the following:
- Delivering quality products, finalizing industrial scale qualifications processes and confirming sales;
- Continued incremental ramp up of throughput and production volumes;
- Optimizing the flowsheet, reagents and recoveries; and
- Performing a bottleneck analysis for current production targets and future expansions.
Both the fines and coarse grain circuits have generally achieved 92-96% Cg concentrates, and the drying process is achieving the overall technical specification of < 0.5% moisture. The tailings filter press is on average producing 20-25% moisture filtercake, which is co-disposed in the waste dump, while the plant is recirculating approximately 80% of the process water.
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South Star Battery Metals Announces Production and Shipment of First Graphite Concentrates and Operational Update for the Santa Cruz Graphite Mine, source
