South Star Battery Metals Corp. announced the successful production and shipment of its first container of natural flake graphite concentrates from the Santa Cruz Graphite Mine in Bahia, Brazil. The initial shipment consists of 20 bulk bags of graphite concentrates, which are now secured and awaiting transportation to the United States. This milestone marks the first new commercial graphite production in the Americas since 1996, positioning South Star as a key supplier of high-quality graphite in global markets.
The Santa Cruz Mine is fully licensed and permitted to produce up to 50,000 tonnes of concentrates annually. This achievement underscores South Star’s leadership in developing secure, scalable, and sustainable graphite production in the Western Hemisphere. The company aims to support traditional industrial markets and strengthen critical supply chains for defense, stationary storage, and the broader energy transition.
Richard Pearce, CEO of South Star commented, “We are excited and proud to deliver this important milestone for the Phase 1 Santa Cruz operations, bringing 15 years of vision and hard work to life. Our team has completed the construction and delivery of the first product with zero loss-time incidents (“LTIs”). It’s a real testament to our team’s dedication, discipline, hard work and focus with 887 days and over 389,650 manhours completed through April 30, 2025 with no LTIs. I would like to thank our team, clients and investors for their continued support of South Star and Santa Cruz.”
In its operational update, South Star revealed that the Santa Cruz Mine is ramping up Phase 1 production to achieve approximately 3,500 to 4,000 metric tonnes of graphite concentrates in 2025, with a target increase to 10,000 tonnes in 2026. The Phase 1 plant is currently operating at around 92% mechanical availability. Mine operations have confirmed a graphite carbon content of 2.8% to 3.5% and an overall waste to ore strip ratio of 1:1. Ore variability remains low, and the flake size distribution meets expectations with 65% coarse and 35% fines.
Key priorities for the next three months include delivering quality products and confirming sales, incrementally increasing throughput and production volumes, optimizing the flowsheet and recoveries, and performing a bottleneck analysis to meet production targets. Additionally, the tailings filter press is producing an average of 20-25% moisture filtercake for co-disposal in the waste dump, while the plant recycles approximately 80% of the process water.
South Star Battery Metals Corp., listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol STS and on the OTCQB under STSBF, focuses on acquiring and developing near-term production projects in the Americas. The Santa Cruz Graphite Project is part of a series of industrial and battery-metal projects planned for production.
Source: Globe Newswire
