Tirupati Graphite, a UK-based graphite and graphene materials company, announced that it would ship the first commercial-scale Column Flotation System (CFS) to its graphite production plant in Madagascar following successful launch trials.

The company said it would be deploying the CFS at the plant as part of an upgrade and expansion project, including replacing three out of four flotation stages.

This would deliver "significant commercial and operational improvements," it claimed, and lead to "significant benefits on cost and efficiency.

The company claimed that the plant's current capacity is 9,000 tonnes per annum, but this would increase to 18,000 by the Q" 2022 and reach 54,000 by 2024.

Shishir Poddar, executive chairman of Tirupati Graphite, said global flake demand for graphite "continues to grow, driven by the acceleration in the transition to electric mobility."

"We believe in continuous innovation and technological improvements and continue to make progress towards being an important contributor to the energy transition economy and in the process seize the opportunities for creating sustainable values for our shareholders," Poddar said.

He continued by saying the company's dedicated research centre in India, where the CFS was developed, had enabled it to commercialise the technology and add "many unique features" which improve the downstream graphite production.