Bogala Graphite Mine () is a

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 ...

mine located near the village of Aruggammana in

Kegalle District Kegalle is a district in Sabaragamuwa Province, Sri Lanka. It is one of 25 districts of Sri Lanka, the second level administrative division of the country. The district is administered by a District Secretariat headed by a District Secretary (pre ...

Sabaragamuwa Province The Sabaragamuwa Province (, , ) is one of the nine provinces of Sri Lanka, provinces of Sri Lanka. Ratnapura is the capital of the province. History The provinces of Sri Lanka were created by the British Empire, British in the 19th century, but ...

. It is one of the largest graphite mines in Sri Lanka, with commercial mining at this location first commencing in 1847. Merenyagé Arnolis Fernando, born 12 August 1850 in

Moratuwa Moratuwa () is a large municipality on the southwestern coast of Sri Lanka, near Dehiwala-Mount Lavinia. It is situated on the Galle–Colombo (Galle road) main highway, south of the centre of Colombo. Moratuwa is surrounded on three sides ...

, the second son of Merenyagé Juanis Fernando, a carpenter, and Silapu Perumagé Angela Fernando. Fernando started work as a carpenter but went onto become a foreman on a Sinhalese graphite mine. In the 1880s he became a graphite mine owner in his own right and over the next two decades assembled considerable capital assets. By 1906/07 he controlled a number of graphite mines including sites at Pusshena, Aruggammana, Medagoda, Panangala and Kurunduwatte, as well as a number of coconut and cinnamon plantations. His sons, James Alfred Fernando (1894–1936) and

Ernest Peter Arnold Fernando Sir Ernest Peter Arnold Fernando, (7 February 1904 - 3 December 1956) was a Ceylonese businessman and mine owner. He was the owner of the Bogala Graphite Mine, one of the largest graphite mines in Ceylon. A patron of the arts, he gifted the buildi ...

(1904–1956), were responsible for expanding the family company's, A. Fernando and Co., interests at Bogala where they discovered a substantial graphite vein, founding the Bogala Graphite Company in 1941. The Bogala mine was nationalised in 1971 falling under the control of the State Graphite Corporation of Ceylon, which was renamed in 1979 to the State Mining and Mineral Development Corporation. In 1991 the mine was subsequently privatised under the ownership of Bogala Graphite Ltd. In 1999 Germany's Graphit Kropfmühl AG initially acquired a 20% share in the company, increased their shareholding to 80% in 2001 and 88% by 2004. Graphit Kropfmühl AG currently owns 79.58% of the company and the other, Graphite is mined through open pit and underground methods. major shareholder is Alterna GK LLC which controls a 10.33% stake. In 2013 the maximum depth of the shaft at Bogala mines was and the deepest mining level was , although various explorations estimate that the veins progress beyond . There are three main graphite veins at Bogala, the Na, Mee and Kumbuk. The Mee vein has been mined out with the Mee vein merging with Na vein at approximately . At the Kumbuk vein splits and this split vein is the most productive vein in operation. The average vein thickness in Bogala is about . The carbon grade of graphite at Bogala varies between 85% and 99.9%.

References

{{reflist Graphite mines in Sri Lanka

See also

References