Westwater Resources has advanced the permitting process for its Coosa Graphite Mine, a key step toward developing the company’s largest domestic graphite deposit located 30 miles west of the Kellyton Graphite Processing Plant.
The company has retained a third‑party engineering firm to lead the permitting effort and will engage with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, and other state and local authorities. The permitting package will include environmental studies and applications for water discharge, wetlands, air permits, and other operational and construction approvals.
Coosa is a 41,965‑acre brownfield site that was previously mined, sits on private land with no nearby population centers or known archaeological sensitivities, and benefits from existing infrastructure. The deposit contains 26 million short tons of indicated resources at 2.89 % graphitic carbon and 97 million short tons of inferred resources at 3.08 % Cg, with an initial assessment in 2023 estimating a pre‑tax NPV of $229 million and an IRR of 26.7 %.
The mine is intended to provide a long‑term feedstock source for the Kellyton plant, which is under construction and expected to be online by 2026, reaching full capacity by 2028. Westwater has already secured a conditional offtake agreement with South Korean firm SK On Co., Ltd. to supply up to 34,000 metric tons of natural graphite anode products.
The project also aligns with U.S. policy incentives for domestic critical minerals and the Inflation Reduction Act, and it could benefit from a potential vanadium by‑product upside that was excluded from the 2023 economic analysis. The permitting milestone brings Westwater closer to a vertically integrated domestic battery‑grade graphite supply chain and reduces reliance on foreign imports.
Westwater’s proprietary, environmentally safer purification process for graphite avoids the use of hydrofluoric acid, further differentiating the project in a market increasingly focused on sustainability.
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