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The Balama mine is one of the largest graphite mines in Mozambique and in the world. The mine is located in the northern part of the country in Cabo Delgado Province. The mine has estimated reserves of 1.15 billion tonnes of ore 10.2% graphite.
Most of the graphite is in layers of graphitic in a ridge and three hills up to 250m above the surrounding plains. The area also contains 1.15bt vanadium, which the owner planned to develop under a separate project, named the Balama Vanadium Project.
The processing plant produces about 350,000 tonnes per annum (tpa) of graphite concentrate from an ore throughput of two million tonnes per year. The power for this plant has comes from (15.4MW on-site consisting of seven 2.2MW generators) and later from an additional 11.25 MWp solar photovoltaic array. It was planned to power the plant from the national grid in the fifth year of operations.
By 2025, a tailings storage facility needed to be expanded.
In December 2024, the owner of the mine Syrah Resources suspended operations because of farmers protests since September. The protests were due to unsttled grievances because of resettlement. They could suspend because they received a waiver to service their debtor the US International Development Finance Corporation, for "default events", akin to invoking force majeure.
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