With the green light from regulators now secured, the company said it could move forward with site preparation, contractor selection and other early works.

Talga is aiming to start mining in June and finish by September.

“This represents a significant milestone as we prepare for our demonstration plant construction and it is encouraging that the permit conditions are industry standard and very much in line with our expectations,” Talga managing director Mark Thompson said.

“Vittangi has a historic pit that we will operate from and ultimately the test mining will allow us to rehabilitate what is essentially a degraded site.

“Additionally, the trial of techniques and processing will provide information towards the optimal approach for potential full scale development.”

The ore mined under the trial program will be transported by train to central Germany for processing at Talga’s soon to be constructed graphene demonstration plant.

The company is aiming to produce graphite and graphene test samples from the fourth quarter of the calendar year.

Talga shares were up 5% to A42c today.