PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Bauxite developer Metro Mining has signed a binding offtake agreement with China’s Xinfa Group over nearly half of the bauxite produced at its planned Bauxite Hills project, in Queensland.
Xinfa will take one-million tonnes of the expected four-million tonnes that Bauxite Hills will produce in the first year of operation. This will increase to two-million tonnes a year for the following three years.
Metro MD Simon Finnis said on Thursday that the agreement was a strong endorsement of the quality of the company’s bauxite and showed the confidence Xinfa had in Metro’s progress towards production.
Metro in January this year delivered a prefeasibility study into a four-million-tonne-a-year operation at Bauxite Hills, which indicated that the project would have a 13-year mine life, a net present value of A$582-million and an internal rate of return of 156%.
The project will require a capital investment of A$40.1-million.
“Our focus now is on completion of the definitive feasibility study, achieving permitting approvals and undertaking predevelopment work,” Finnis said.
The offtake agreement is subject to the granting of a mining lease, Metro’s final investment approval, and the first shipment of product.
Edited by: Creamer Media Reporter
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