Canadian firm South Star Battery Metals has completed drilling pads and expects to move drilling rigs into place for its maiden graphite drilling campaign in Coosa County.
The drilling location is on the site of the historic Ceylon mine, that produced graphite during World Wars I and II.
Between now and the end of November, South Star plans to drill 10 to 15 holes long 1.5 kilometers of strike; perform logging and assays; perform a QA/QC program with blanks, duplicates and standards, do background water quality testing and begin geotechnical drilling.
Samples from the Alabama mine are being tested at North Carolina State University.
“We are very excited to get the drills turning for our maiden resource estimate in Alabama, and the met pilot testing program is underway and on schedule. We are aiming to get a maiden 43-101 resource estimate for Alabama out early Q1 2023 and a 43-101 PEA delivered end of year 2023,” said CEO President Richard Pearce, describing it as “Exciting times as we race to be the first new graphite production in the Americas in over a decade.”
In its corporate background, South Star talks about the Alabama project this way: “South Star’s next project in the development pipeline is a project in Alabama located in the middle of a developing electric vehicle, aerospace and defence hub in the southeastern United States. The Project is a historic mine active during World Wars I & II. Trenching, sampling, analysis and preliminary metallurgic testing has been completed. The testing indicated a traditional crush/grind/flotation concentration circuit achieved grades of approximately 96-97% with approximately 86% recoveries. South Star is executing on its plan to create a multi-asset, diversified battery metals company with near-term operations in strategic jurisdictions.”
South Star trades on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol STS, and on the OTCQB under the symbol STSBF.
A Colorado-based firm, Westwater Resources, is building a graphite processing plant nearby in Kellyton, also hoping to tap the Coosa County resources. Westwater plans to begin operation with imported graphite and move to mining in the next phase of its operations.
Graphite is a key component of automotive batteries, and most of this metal is imported from China.
