By: OrePulse

Lindian Resources said it remains on track to produce its first batch of monazite concentrate in December from the Kangankunde rare earths project in Malawi, with construction, mining and commissioning work at the site continuing to advance toward the planned start-up.

The Australian Securities Exchange-listed company said its ore stockpile at Kangankunde has grown to approximately 149,000 tonnes, up from 24,000 tonnes in September. The roughly sixfold increase over a single month points to a sharp acceleration in mining activity at the site as Lindian builds up feedstock ahead of the planned start of processing.

Energization of the site, a step that precedes commissioning of the processing plant, is expected to be completed in the first week of November. Lindian said that milestone would clear the way for first production before the end of the year, keeping the project on the timeline the company has previously set out.

Under Kangankunde's initial Stage 1 development plan, the processing plant has been designed to produce 15,300 tonnes a year of monazite concentrate grading 55 percent total rare earth oxides. Lindian has said this Stage 1 configuration is expected to support a mine life of 45 years at the project, a timeframe that reflects the scale of the resource underpinning the initial phase of development.

The company has also pointed to potential later expansion phases that could raise monazite concentrate output to as much as 120,000 tonnes a year, roughly eight times the initial Stage 1 target. Lindian has not given a timeline for when any such expansion phases might proceed, and the figure represents a potential ceiling for the project rather than a confirmed near-term plan.

Kangankunde is among a limited number of rare earths projects moving toward production outside China, which accounts for the large majority of the world's processed output of rare earth materials used in permanent magnets, electronics, defense equipment and clean-energy technologies. If Lindian brings the project into production on the timeline it has outlined, Kangankunde would become one of only a handful of new rare earths supply sources operating outside China, a development that governments and companies elsewhere have been seeking as part of broader efforts to diversify rare earths supply chains away from reliance on Chinese production.

Kangankunde sits in Malawi, a landlocked country in southern Africa, where Lindian has been advancing the project through construction and toward commissioning ahead of the planned December start.

Lindian's update covers the Stage 1 phase of the Kangankunde project. The company has framed the growth in its ore stockpile and the planned completion of site energization in early November as the key remaining steps before monazite concentrate output begins in December, with the larger-scale expansion phases to follow as separate, later stages of development.