The plant will be commissioned in the coming weeks and Salt Lake Potash chief executive officer and managing director Tony Swiericzuk said first production should follow suit.
“The SO4 operations team continues to work towards continuous operation of the process plant to deliver first SOP, expected over the coming weeks,” Swiericzuk said.
Fine tuning of the flotation circuit at Lake Way has also been ongoing and is on schedule to coincide with production start this quarter.
GR Engineering has two contracts with Salt Lake Potash at Lake Way, worth a combined $107 million.
The first contract, covering engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) at Lake Way, is valued at $85 million.
The second contract, which is worth $22 million, involves engineering, procurement and construction management (EPCM) for both Lake Way’s process plant and other infrastructure.
The contracts were handed out in June 2020, when Swiericzuk described GR Engineering as a very important puzzle piece for Lake Way.
“We are very pleased to have executed these contracts with GRES (GR Engineering Services) who have been a critical contracting partner by our side throughout the design development of the Lake Way processing plant and off-lake infrastructure since early 2019,” he said.
The Lake Way project is forecast to produce 245,000 tonnes of sulphate of potash (SOP) per annum and has a 20-year mine life.
The process plant was designed by GR Engineering and Wood Group, and will operate as a reverse flotation, conversion and re-crystallisation process.