EV Resources Commissions Flotation Circuit at Tecomatlán Antimony Processing Plant

EV Resources (ASX: EVR) has assembled, commissioned, and dry tested cells within the flotation circuit of its Tecomatlán processing plant in Mexico, confirming the circuit is operating as designed.

The flotation circuit forms the final stage of the company’s planned processing flowsheet to produce a marketable antimony concentrate from ore sourced from its flagship Los Lirios project and the nearby Chinantla project.

Commissioning and dry testing represent another important milestone in the staged development strategy for the plant.

The next stage will process a 200-tonne bulk sample from Chinantla through Tecomatlán’s crushing, grinding and flotation circuits to demonstrate operational capability of the entire processing flowsheet.

Proof-of-Concept Campaign

While final plant integration will occur as the project advances towards commercial production, EV believes Tecomatlán’s major processing circuits are now sufficiently advanced to commence an operational proof-of-concept (PoC) campaign.

The campaign will demonstrate the operational capability of each processing stage, validate the proposed flowsheet under test operating conditions, and progressively de-risk the pathway to commercial production.

The engineering, metallurgical, and operational data generated will support commercial production and refine operations and plant efficiencies to a level of full plant commissioning in the near term.

“The successful commissioning and dry testing of our flotation circuit marks another important milestone in EV's staged pathway towards antimony production,” new executive chair Shane Manere said.

“This next campaign is expected to demonstrate that the […] circuits can operate together to produce EVR's first marketable antimony concentrate, while generating the operational data needed to support the next stage of plant development.”

New Flotation Strategy

EV Resources recently completed a round of metallurgical testing that achieved strong antimony recoveries and confirmed flotation as the preferred processing route to produce a commercial-grade concentrate.

The test work used Chinantla ore as a regional, third-party feedstock source under a non-binding memorandum of understanding, demonstrating an 81.1% antimony recovery rate to produce a flotation concentrate grading 42.4%.

The results saw the company pivot from an earlier two-phase gravity-flotation development timeline for Tecomatlán to a direct integrated flotation upgrade path using the existing flotation circuit with additional high-efficiency cells installed to capture performance improvements.

Unlike a laboratory metallurgical program, the PoC campaign represents the first operational demonstration of the Tecomatlán processing flowsheet using bulk ore under staged commissioning conditions.