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    Kathleen Valley ball mill expansion: design and load notes for project engineers

    April 29, 2026|

    Reviewed by Tom Sullivan

    Kathleen Valley ball mill expansion: design and load notes for project engineers

    First reported on Australian Mining

    30 Second Briefing

    Ball mill procurement has kicked off Liontown Resources’ expansion of the Kathleen Valley lithium operation in Western Australia, with early works focused on securing long‑lead grinding equipment to lift plant throughput beyond the current nameplate. The project centres on adding a larger secondary ball mill to the existing crushing–HPGR–ball milling circuit to debottleneck comminution and support higher spodumene concentrate output. For geotechnical and civil teams, the expansion will require new mill foundations, dynamic load assessments, and potential upgrades to power, water and tailings infrastructure.

    Technical Brief

    • Liontown Resources is operator and owner of the Kathleen Valley lithium project in Western Australia.

    Our Take

    In our database, Kathleen Valley is one of the few Western Australian lithium operations explicitly tracked as transitioning from open pit to fully underground (Dec 2025 coverage), so ball mill procurement here likely reflects a long-life, higher-grade underground processing strategy rather than a short-term debottlenecking move.

    The December 2025 note on Liontown’s first Tjiwarl community apprentice at Kathleen Valley suggests that any expansion-related plant changes, such as new milling capacity, will be scrutinised for local employment and training opportunities as the underground mine ramps up.

    With Liontown already running a 3Mtpa spodumene auction platform and a Canmax offtake (Dec 2025 article), additional ball mill capacity at the Kathleen Valley lithium operation positions the company to respond quickly if spodumene prices revisit the higher levels seen in early 2026 across Australian hard-rock producers.

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    Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.

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