Australia’s first downstream graphite pilot and product qualification plant in Australia recently hosted Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, and other ministers and representatives for an inspection of the facility.
Located 200km south of Perth, the Collie Facility is a key link in International Graphite’s mine-to-market development strategy, which includes downstream processing at Collie and the development of one of the nation’s largest graphite resources at Springdale, Western Australia.
The Collie facility is home to International Graphite’s pilot-scale graphite micronising and spheroidising equipment and a qualification-scale micronising plant that is generating products for customer acceptance testing.
International Graphite secured $13.2 million in funding from the Federal and Western Australian Governments for its role in building the nation’s battery minerals capability and supporting Collie’s economic transition.
Prime Minister Albanese was accompanied by Federal Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, and Assistant Minister Josh Wilson. They were also joined by Western Australia’s Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, Reece Whitby, Member for Collie-Preston MLA Jodie Hanns, and other Western Australian Government representatives.
International Graphite Chairman, Phil Hearse, applauded the government’s strategy, which recognises the national benefits of building Australia’s critical minerals capability, and the importance of adding value to the nation’s raw materials.
“Hosting the Prime Minister and Ministers Bowen and Wilson, and Western Australian Minister Whitby, was a great privilege and illustrates the commitment and interest Government is bringing to our industry,” Mr Hearse said.
“We are seeing growing demand for Australian product, particularly in allied markets like the US, Europe, Japan and Korea.
“The knowledge that International Graphite is acquiring from its qualification plant operations here in Collie, along with valued support from both the Commonwealth and state, has been critical in helping to develop our downstream processing strategy.”
Sample graphite product is currently being transported to potential customers in the battery materials, defence, plastics, lubricants and aerospace industries worldwide.
Since its commissioning earlier in 2024, 2,000-person-hours have been successfully completed with no lost time incidents recorded. An ISO 9001:2015 audit has also confirmed that appropriate quality management systems are in place to support the operation.
Plans are underway to expand the Collie facilities to achieve nameplate capacity of 4,000t of micronised products per annum, following the award of $4.5 million in Western Australian Government funding in April 2024.
The plant will be tailored to process graphite mined at the company’s 100 per cent-owned Springdale Graphite Project, on the south coast of Western Australia, establishing one of the first fully integrated mine-to-market graphite operations in the western world. International Graphite plans to develop one of Australia’s first anode production facilities for the lithium-ion battery industry.
Micronised graphite is the first stage in graphite production for lithium-ion battery anodes and is a critical conductive additive in battery cathodes. It is also widely used in many defence, electronics, and industrial products, such as plastics, ceramics, refractory items, adhesives and lubricants.
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