Renascor backed on aim to make electric-car battery anode material from its huge graphite mine on Eyre Peninsula
Renascor Resources managing director David Christensen at the Siviour graphite mine site near Arno Bay on South Australia's Eyre Peninsula and (inset) in the laboratory with a graphite sample.
Renascor Resources’s aim to produce electric-car battery anode material from the second-largest proven reserve of graphite in the world, at its Siviour mine near Arno Bay on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula, was given major project status by the Australian government in 2021.
The $210 million project in South Australia involved the mine site to create a 95% graphite product and a more technical plant to create a purified spherical graphite product to at least 99.95% purity. This would be the first integrated graphite mine and battery anode material operation outside of China. A final investment decision was expected in 2022.
Several sites were flagged for Renascor Renascor Resources’s downstream purified spherical graphite manufacturing plant, including Port Adelaide, Port Pirie and Port Augusta.
Australian government resources and water minister Keith Pitt, announcing the major project status, said the Renascor Resources project had the potential to generate around $260 million a year in export revenue and it was another step towards a slice of the $400 billion world critical minerals market: “Whether it is mobile phones and laptops, medical equipment or electric cars, rare earth minerals are the essential components of so much manufacturing today and into the future.”
Renascor Resources managing director David Christensen told InDaily, Adelaide, that the ability to mine the graphite, process it and purify it to at least 99.% purity, before exporting to buyers in China, Japan and Korea, gave the Siviour project a competitive advantage.
Renascor Resources's aims to supply purified spherical graphite to the global electric car industry were boosted by a non-binding deal with POSCO, one of the world’s biggest steel makers and a major South Korean lithium-ion battery materials buyer, in 2021. The POSCO deal followed smaller non-binding agreements with two Chinese battery anode companies and a Japanese trading company.
Australian government major project status for companies such as Renascor Resources gave them access to extra support, coordination, and information services through the government.
