Name of the Project
Kasiya rutile/graphite project.

Location
Lilongwe district, in the Central Region of Malawi.

Project Owner/s
Sovereign Metals Limited. Rio Tinto is a strategic partner and has provided technical input through the Sovereign–Rio Tinto Technical Committee, but Sovereign owns the project.

Project Description
Kasiya is a large-scale rutile and graphite project that reportedly hosts the world’s largest natural rutile deposit and the second-largest flake graphite deposit.

The April 2026 definitive feasibility study (DFS) outlines an initial 25-year mine life, based on total ore mined of 536-million tonnes, with steady-state production of 222 000 t/y of rutile grading more than 95% titanium dioxide and 275 000 t of graphite grading 96% total graphitic content.

The project will be developed as a dry-mined openpit operation using draglines and 100 t rigid dump trucks. The soft, free-dig saprolite orebody requires no drilling, blasting, crushing or milling.

Mining will be undertaken in two benches, comprising a 5 m top cut and a bottom cut of up to 15 m, with the selected mining method aimed at keeping draglines above the water table.

Processing will be undertaken through a staged dual-plant configuration. A 12-million-tonne-a-year south plant is planned for Years 1 to 4, with a second 12-million-tonne-a-year north plant to be added from Year 5, lifting total plant throughput to 24-million tonnes a year. Ore will be scrubbed and screened before entering a wet concentrator plant, where gravity separation will produce a heavy mineral concentrate.

This concentrate will then be treated using a mineral separation plant, with electrostatic and magnetic separation to produce rutile, while graphite-rich concentrate recovered from the spirals will be processed in a dedicated flotation plant to produce a high-purity, coarse-flake graphite product.

The DFS notes that all tailings are planned to be returned to mined-out pits through hydraulic co-disposal backfilling, eliminating the need for a conventional tailings storage facility.

Products will be exported along the Nacala Logistics Corridor to the Port of Nacala.

Sovereign has noted that a monazite evaluation programme is under way to assess the potential scale, recovery and economics of a possible third revenue stream linked to heavy rare earths (HREs) – dysprosium, terbium and yttrium.

Potential Job Creation
Not stated.

Net Present Value/Internal Rate of Return
The DFS reports a real pretax net present value, at an 8% discount rate, of $2.2-billion and a pretax internal rate of return of 23%. The payback is estimated at 6.2 years from the start of production, based on unlevered, pretax cash flow.

Capital Expenditure
Capital expenditure to first production is estimated at $727-million.

Planned Start/End Date
No official start date has been reported.

Mining is planned to start 12 months before production to allow for early ore stockpiling and the creation of voids for tailings backfilling. South plant production is scheduled to start in Year 1, with north plant production to start in Year 5. Nameplate run-of-mine capacity is expected to be reached by the end of Year 5.

Latest Developments
Testwork conducted on monazite concentrate recovered from the Kasiya project has confirmed that the HRE content of dysprosium, terbium and yttrium first reported in January is present in four pits that are scheduled to be mined in the early years of production.

Tested monazite concentrates have been recovered from the nonconductor tailings stream of the processing flowsheet specified in the Kasiya DFS. This is material that would otherwise report to tailings.

The recovery of this material as a by-product of the DFS-specified flowsheet means that the company will not have to invest in additional mining, new primary processing circuits, the parallel rare earths processing plants needed by primary rare earth producers or additional reagents.

Monazite concentrate recovery is, therefore, potentially achievable at near-zero incremental costs relative to the DFS base case.

Sovereign has noted that further work is required to assess the capital and operating cost implications of any downstream product separation or refining, and to characterise the mineralogy, deportment, liberation and radioactive element (uranium and thorium) handling requirements of the Kasiya monazite.

Meanwhile, the company has also reported that the average total rare earth oxide (TREO) basket ratios for the Kasiya project are estimated to be about seven times higher than that of the world's five largest rare earths producers.

An independent price report for a monazite concentrate has been prepared based on the composition of a 60% TREO basket. Owing to the high proportion of HREs within Kasiya's TREO basket, the independent report has identified the potential for a premium to benchmark monazite price.

The 2026 forecast base-case price is $16 000/t, against a current benchmark monazite concentrate (54% to 55% TREO grade) price of about $6 142/t.

Key Contracts, Suppliers and Consultants
DRA Global (project management and engineering, dry mining options investigation, process engineering support and operating costing); Moletech Consulting (ore reserves and production target work); Paterson & Cooke (pumping, settling and dewatering testwork); Epoch Resources (tailings management); Professional Cost Consultants (capital cost estimating); Practara Metals & Mining Advisory (financial modelling); and R&H Rail and Grindrod Logistics (logistics).

Contact Details for Project Information
Sovereign Metals, tel +61 8 9322 6322 or email info@sovereignmetals.com.au.