SGA: graphite project land access approved

Our graphite Investment Sarytogan Graphite (ASX:SGA) is a step closer to development of its huge graphite project in Kazakhstan.

SGA today announced that it has signed a land access agreement with the local Farm and Land User at the Sarytogan Graphite Project

This agreement clears the path for SGA to apply for a mining licence and future mining approvals.

Under the land access agreement SGA will make a US$10,000 prepayment, plus a lump-sum compensation payment of US$240,000 upon the grant of the mining licence, from which it may unilaterally withdraw at any time.

As for the Farm and Land User, it will do all things necessary to allow the grant of the mining licence, including surrendering the part of their land plot coincident with the proposed mining lease.

Without land access, projects can't be developed so today’s news is quite significant.

Today's news follows SGA last month updating its resource with results coming in almost double our “bull case” expectation.

SGA now has a Mineral Resource totalling 229Mt at a grade of 28.9% TGC for a total of 66Mt of contained graphite - 36Mt of which now sits in the “indicated category”. Read more here.

Meanwhile, metwork remains ongoing.

SGA continues to work with its processing partners to achieve the required Uncoated Spherical Graphite (USpG) specifications of 99.95% purity in spherical graphite balls of 5-20 micron in size.

At this stage, SGA has managed to hit 99.87% purity levels through flotation, alkali roasting, and chemical purification.

Having achieved 99.87%, SGA is chasing that all-important 99.95%+ purity level — the key to accessing the battery anode market with a high priced spherical graphite product.

SGA is running a bulk flotation program through the current quarter to feed into the spheroidization program in Q3-2023, ahead of battery performance tests in Q4 2023.