Bacanora continues to progress all its workstreams at the Sonora project in Mexico, the lithium exploration and development company announced Monday.
However, the timetable for project engineering work has been impacted by delays in Asia and North America, the company said, due to the ongoing government restrictions in response to the covid-19 outbreak. As a result, completion of the project is now scheduled for Q3 2020.
Ganfeng Lithium, like all Chinese companies, was severely impacted on by the travel restrictions imposed by the Chinese government during February and early March. Although these restrictions are now being lifted, the return to work has been slow, Bacanora stated.
Ganfeng’s main lithium processing plant at Xinyu is resuming operations and lithium production is building up. The Ganfeng test plant and project team have also resumed work on the Sonora flow sheet optimization and process engineering, and while some weeks of engineering have been lost, completion of engineering and equipment selection is now scheduled for the third quarter.
Ganfeng will subsequently provide Bacanora with an engineering, procurement and construction-style engineering proposal to produce downstream battery-grade lithium products from the Sonora lithium plant.
Bacanora emphasized that this schedule remains under regular review in relation to the ongoing covid-19 situation.