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ADU PReVIeW After nearly seven years of work,
Walkabout started mining at its Lindi
Jumbo graphite project in Tanzania
following an initial blast in July

Walkabout

opts to leap

t began with a bang as Walkabout Re- for us to get going. So, we were quite powerline was also being erected.
Isources Ltd made its foray into mining, ready once we settled the financing to pull Cunningham said Walkabout was be-
successfully setting off the first blast from the trigger and get going.” ginning to re-engage with binding partners
its starter pit at the Lindi Jumbo graphite Two years later when the Walkabout over the prices of its product.
operation in Tanzania in July. team, along with the rest of the world, was “We’ve got binding term sheets with two
As the company turns its attention to thrown one of life’s biggest curveballs in Chinese graphite end users as well as a
getting first production from the under- the form of the COVID-19 pandemic, the marketing and sales agreement with a
construction processing plant, chief ex- company once again dug deep. large global sales house out of Hong Kong,”
ecutive Andrew Cunningham said Walka- Walkabout ran a successful vaccination he said. “When we put these [agreements]
bout had managed to “leapfrog” its peers programme for its workforce and the lo- together in 2019, we deliberately didn’t
in the graphite space. cal community, which saw every member put any pricing in there because we knew
“It’s quite an exciting milestone for us. of the Lindi Jumbo team receiving its first what it [the graphite market] would be like
Being in the project from a conceptional shot of the vaccine by October 2021. once we got into production.
idea in 2015 looking for high-grade graph- “We’ve got tremendous support with the “Six months out from production, we will
ite, to actually doing the first blast 6-7 Government, they see what we do, we are start speaking to our parties about a pric-
years later as we’re building the plant is fully compliant and it was never our inten- ing mechanism and put that together. We
quite exciting,” he told Paydirt. “There is tion of running it any way else,” Cunning- are focusing on that area now and will up-
a healthy stockpile of material that we will ham said. “We’ve got very good support date the market once we get that finalised.”
use for the commissioning and the first from the local communities because that’s Benchmark Mineral Intelligence fore-
production from our mine. where we start.” casts demand for graphite, the heaviest
“It’s quite an exciting time to come from Investing in itself and the community has material used in EV batteries, to outpace
way behind any of our peers…to now leap- paid off for Walkabout with Lindi Jumbo its production in the near future, while the
frogging them and being a couple of years forecast to deliver a post-tax NPV of $197 World Bank expects 4.5 mtpa graphite to
ahead of anyone else.” million, IRR of 119% and payback in just 22 be needed by 2050 to support a battery-
Cunningham attributes Walkabout’s months. Over an estimated 24-year mine powered low carbon future.
speedy work to staying the course back in life, the operation is expected to achieve “It’s quite an exciting state in the graph-
2017 when others in Tanzania grew hesi- an annual EBITDA of $44.1 million. ite industry right now,” Cunningham said.
tant following the sudden changes to the Cunningham said while Lindi Jumbo – “There’s a lot of interest from outside of
country’s mining legislation. 987,000t @ 17.9% TGC reserve and 4.5mt China in securing an alternative source
The Tanzanian Parliament passed three @ 10.8% TGC resource – posed a small of graphite supply. China produces about
bills amending the 2010 Mining Act, mak- presence, the project offers high value 70% of the world’s graphite and with what
ing adjustments to free-carried rights, compared to its graphite peers. is happening in Ukraine and Russia, a lot
protections of permanent sovereignty and “It’s a much smaller footprint, it’s a much of Western countries are looking for forms
stabilisation clauses. smaller plant than any of our peer group of responsibly sourced graphite.
“A lot of guys put their programmes and it was relatively quicker to the put the “We are in the unique position where
on hold and didn’t progress, while we in- capital together to get into construction,” we can do things right from the start. We
corporated the changes to our DFS and he said. “The high-grade nature of the ore- are not trying to fix something that is bro-
used that time to complete our engineer- body…meant we could keep the capital as ken…our carbon footprint will be relatively
ing works,” Cunningham said. “We did the low as possible.” small.”
early start works in 2019 where we cleared Civil works at the processing plant were Walkabout was also working towards
most of the plant area…putting some of almost 90% complete at the time of print, initial drawdown of Lindi Jumbo’s debt at
the infrastructure on site. utilising more than 150 workers throughout the time of print, with EY undertaking an
“That gave us a good kickstart and once construction. independent review of the operation.
the financing was put together, we could The mine will have access to grid power – Fraser Palamara
get the contractors that did the early works from a 33kV powerline while a 4.5MW

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