Mineral Resources said it would prioritise redeploying the around 300 workers impacted by the company transitioning its Bald Hill lithium mine into care and maintenance.
The company will follow a redundancy process where redeployment opportunities across MinRes’ other operations in Western Australia cannot be found.
Mineral Resources performed a strategic review of the project and has cited the prolonged period of low spodumene concentrate prices as the reason for the decision.
Located 50km southeast of Kambalda in the Goldfields region, the transition to care and maintenance will preserve cash and the value of Bald Hill’s spodumene orebody for when conditions in the global lithium market improve.
Mining and mobile maintenance operations will cease immediately, and the spodumene concentrate plant and accommodation village are scheduled to temporarily cease operations by early December 2024.
The final shipment of Bald Hill spodumene concentrate is expected to be sold in December, with FY25 shipped SC6 volumes now expected to be approximately 60k dry metric tonnes (dmt), compared to the prior volume guidance of 120-145k dmt SC6 equivalent.
Approximately ten employees will remain on site to coordinate production ramp-down and care and maintenance activities.
When the global lithium price improves to a level that incentivises Bald Hill’s restart, the ramp-up back to full operation is anticipated to take approximately four to six weeks.
During care and maintenance, MinRes will continue to optimise mine plans, scale and operating structure ahead of any future restart.
MinRes also provided an updated mineral resources statement for Bald Hill as of 30 June 2024.
The updated Bald Hill mineral resources of 58.1Mt at 0.94 per cent Li2O is a 168 per cent increase from the June 2018 estimate of 21.7Mt. This change is the result of the inclusion of a large drilling dataset completed since the June 2018 estimate, which aided in the re-interpretation, geological modelling and resource estimation workflows for the 2024 estimate.
The company said the updated mineral resources confirms the inherent value of the Bald Hill project and underscores the importance of preserving the orebody for when global lithium market conditions are more favourable.
Separately, recent exploration work has identified additional resource potential across the tenure.
MinRes Managing Director, Chris Ellison, said that once conditions in the lithium market improve, Bald Hill is a significant value opportunity for the company.
“Placing Bald Hill on care and maintenance is a prudent decision but one not made lightly,” he said. “The decision aligns with the work we have done across the company in recent months to reduce costs.”
