The Balama mine is one of the largest

graphite Graphite () is a Crystallinity, crystalline allotrope (form) of the element carbon. It consists of many stacked Layered materials, layers of graphene, typically in excess of hundreds of layers. Graphite occurs naturally and is the most stable ...

mines in

Mozambique Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique, is a country located in Southeast Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west, and Eswatini and South Afr ...

and in the world. The mine is located in the northern part of the country in

Cabo Delgado Province Cabo Delgado is the northernmost province of Mozambique. It has an area of and a population of 2,320,261 (2017). It borders the Mtwara Region in the neighbouring country of Tanzania, and the provinces of Nampula and Niassa. The Province is ri ...

. The mine has estimated reserves of 1.15 billion tonnes of ore 10.2% graphite.

Geography and geology

The Balama mine is located West of

Montepuez Montepuez is the second largest city in the province of Cabo Delgado in Mozambique Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique, is a country located in Southeast Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the nort ...

in the Namuno District of

in Northern Mozambique over an area of 106km² mining concession. Most of the graphite is in layers of graphitic

schist Schist ( ) is a medium-grained metamorphic rock generally derived from fine-grained sedimentary rock, like shale. It shows pronounced ''schistosity'' (named for the rock). This means that the rock is composed of mineral grains easily seen with a l ...

s in a ridge and three hills up to 250m above the surrounding plains. The area also contains 1.15bt

vanadium Vanadium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol V and atomic number 23. It is a hard, silvery-grey, malleable transition metal. The elemental metal is rarely found in nature, but once isolated artificially, the formation of an ...

, which the owner planned to develop under a separate project, named the Balama Vanadium Project.

Description

The Balama mine is a low strip ,

open-pit mine Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique that extracts rock or minerals from the earth. Open-pit mines are used when deposits of commercially useful ore or ...

This means, the material is shovelled and then trucked to a processing plant, where the material is crushed and screened, ground before flotation, filtration and drying, classification and screening, and bagging. The two billion cubic metres of water per year for this process comes from the Chipembe Dam, which is 12km away. The processing plant produces about 350,000 tonnes per annum (tpa) of graphite concentrate from an ore throughput of two million tonnes tpa. The power for this plant has comes from two

diesel generator A diesel generator (DG) (also known as a diesel genset) is the combination of a diesel engine with an electric generator (often an alternator) to generate electrical energy. This is a specific case of an engine generator. A diesel compress ...

s (15.4MW on-site consisting of seven 2.2MW generators) and later from an additional 11.25 MWp solar photovoltaic array. It was planned to power the plant from the national grid in the fifth year of operations. By 2025, a

tailings In mining, tailings or tails are the materials left over after the process of separating the valuable fraction from the uneconomic fraction (gangue) of an ore. Tailings are different from overburden, which is the waste rock or other material ...

storage facility needed to be expanded.

History

In May 2015, Syrah Resources completed a feasibility study and by November 2017 it produced its first output; Production began in 2019. During the COVID-19 pandemic it suspended operations for 1 year from March 2020 until March 2021. In December 2024, the owner of the mine Syrah Resources suspended operations because of farmers protests since September. The protests were due to unsttled grievances because of resettlement. They could suspend because they received a waiver to service their debtor the US International Development Finance Corporation, for "default events", akin to invoking

force majeure In contract law, force majeure ( ; ) is a common clause in contracts which essentially frees both parties from liability or obligation when an extraordinary event or circumstance beyond the control of the parties, such as a war, strike, riot, ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Balama Mine Graphite mines in Mozambique