The Syrah Resources Ltd (ASX: SYR) share price is on the move on Tuesday morning.
At the time of writing, the graphite producer's shares are up over 5% to $1.22.
This latest gain means that the Syrah share price is now up an impressive 24% since the start of the year.
Why is the Syrah share price pushing higher on Tuesday?
Investors have been buying Syrah shares this morning following the release of an update on its Balama operation in Mozambique.
According to the release, the company has achieved consistent production of on-specification natural graphite at Balama during March to date. This positions it ahead of schedule versus the expected lead time of two to three months for its first production.
Given that Syrah announced its plan to restart production at Balama on 22 February, it has taken less than a month to get it to this stage.
What now?
The company advised that it will progressively increase plant utilisation and production volumes as the full contingent of labour at Balama continues to be reinstated.
Syrah's Managing Director and CEO, Shaun Verner, commented: "During the period of temporary suspension at Balama, we reduced costs whilst also maintaining operating and marketing capability to ensure that we could promptly respond to an improvement in market conditions."
"Our re-start progress to date is a testament to the ongoing preparedness work by the Balama Operations team during the temporary suspension and positions us well to ramp-up into improving market demand," he added.
Looking further ahead, the company notes that it continues to progress towards becoming a vertically integrated producer of natural graphite Active Anode Material (AAM) to service ex-Asia markets. It intends to operate Balama in parallel with progressing its natural graphite AAM project at Vidalia, Louisiana, USA.
