
International Responsible Business Conduct (IRBC) has completed a project examining aluminium and bauxite supply chains to improve transparency and traceability in materials supporting the renewable energy transition. The project brought together wind energy company Siemens Gamesa, Dutch cable manufacturer TKF, Digital Product Passport (DPP) technology provider Minespider, and project partner Responsible Trade. The initiative mapped selected upstream aluminium and bauxite supply chains and tested secure DPPs to organise and present traceability and sustainability information across multiple supplier tiers. Explore the production, demand and consumption forecasts of bauxite and alumina in our report: " Global Bauxite & Alumina Market Forecast to 2036: Supply–Demand, Trade Flows & Price...
Mount Ridley Mines has reported 94.9 per cent gallium recovery from a third-party bauxite sample using its patent-pending Selectro process, alongside recoveries of 92 per cent aluminium and 97 per cent iron in a single low-temperature leach. The test also produced a silica-rich residue instead of conventional red mud, highlighting the technology’s potential to recover multiple metals from bauxite through one processing route. The sample was provided by Australian Silica Quartz Group from its Darling Range bauxite project in Western Australia. It comprised material collected from 16 vacuum drill samples across four holes at the Athena and Ceres prospects. Containing 80 parts per million of gallium, the sample yielded an extraction rate of 94.9 per cent into solution. Mount Ridley said this...
Grow with
AL Circle

According to a statement made by Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih on Monday during a mining conference in Cairo, the kingdom aims to raise its mining revenues to US$64 billion by 2030 from current US$17 billion.The kingdom has vast untapped reserves of bauxite, phosphate, gold, copper and uranium and the minerals are considered as key to the Saudi Arabia’s efforts to diversify its economy away from hydrocarbons. Falih also said studies indicated that the estimated value of the geological reserves in the kingdom exceed US$1 trillion. “We are seeking to develop the mining sector through the implementation of a comprehensive strategy ... and raise its contribution to GDP from $17 billion to $64 billion, with the generation of 160,000 additional jobs by 2030,” Falih said. “We...

According to an update by Shanghai Metals Market, Guinea-based bauxite producer Societe Miniere de Boke (SMB) plans to spend US$ 1.2 billion to build a railway track that will link its bauxite mining business with Dapilon port. The news came after the Guinea’s government spokesman Aboubacar Sylla announced that in an e-mail. Societe Miniere de Boke (SMB) is a joint venture of three companies like Shandong Weiqiao Aluminium in China, Winning Shipping in Singapore, and UMS International in Guinea. The railway track will be 135 kilometres long and expected to start operating with the next 18 months. Mr. Sylla also mentioned in an emailed statement that this initiative would expand SMB’s bauxite mine as well, building facilities to process bauxite into alumina and to purchase rail vehicles....

Bauxite mining workers in Raipur have reportedly refused to work as a form of protest demanding full wages and alleging that the contractor appointed by Chhattisgarh Mineral Development Corporation (CMDC) was treating them unfairly and giving insufficient money. The protesting miners from the surrounding villages even shut down the weighbridge so that the bauxite laden trucks could not be weighed before dispatched. Violence erupted when the contractor tried to forcibly load the bauxite. At Narmadapur, Mainpat, around 400 villagers were working as labourers in the bauxite mines of government-run CMDC. The contractor promised to pay Rs. 350 for mining a tonne of bauxite but paid Rs. 102 instead. The labourers reportedly lodged a complaint to CMDC senior officials but no action taken till...

Government-owned Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT), Adani Ports and Veritas India along with asset reconstruction company UV ARC have put in bids for the bankrupt Dighi Port, which was developed by IL&FS and Balaji Infra Projects. They submitted the bid to the committee of creditors in Mumbai on Thursday November 23. The port was handling cargo such as Bauxite, Coal and Steel on a regular basis. The port successfully handled Post Panamax and Capesize vessels having a DWT of up to 1,55,000 MTs. The port has been operating at low utilisation levels due to lack of rail and road connectivity combined with the general disruption in global trade. The port promoters were seeking strategic investors. Dighi Port was declared bankrupt and overtaken by National Company Law Tribunal in April after...

Romania’s bauxite import reduced 4% year on year in 2017. The country purchased 1.32 million tonnes of bauxite from the global market, from 1.38 purchased in 2016.Sierra Leone’s bauxite export to Romania in 2017 declined by 4% year on year. The export volume for 2017 was estimated at 1.31 million tonnes. According to the global export-import data, Romania imported 541798 tonnes of bauxite in the first quarter of 2018. The cost of import was estimated at US$ 16.8 million in the mentioned period. In the second quarter of 2018, the volume decreased by 25% from last quarter. The import volume was estimated at 405983 tonnes. The cost of import stood at US$ 12.7 million in Q2 2018. Romania’s imports of bauxite increased to 424126 tonnes in the third quarter of 2018. The cost of import was...

Alufer Mining of Guinea has delivered its first Capesize shipment of bauxite with a volume of 203,009 tonnes, to the Port of Qingdao, in China. Alufer is an independent mineral exploration and development company with significant bauxite assets in the Republic of Guinea. The bauxite will then be delivered to China’s largest alumina and primary aluminium producer, Chalco Shandong. The company said on Thursday that the operational ramp-up phase at Alufer’s Bel Air bauxite project in Guinea is on track and progressing as expected. The mining work is also on track to churn out 5.5 million tonnes of bauxite in 2019. Over 750,000 tonnes of bauxite have been loaded and are on route to other customers. Alufer had recently extended its offtake agreement with Chalco for bauxite supply. According to...

Ghana can now access US$ 649 million as the first tranche of the 2 billion dollar Sinohydro infrastructure. In exchange, the country will have to deliver bauxite to China. Mr. Oppong Nkrumah, the Minister of Information, announced the news while addressing journalists at the bi-weekly media briefing in Accra on Wednesday, November 21. He said two sets of contracts had been laid before Parliament namely, the Engineering Procurement Construction contract (EPC) and Deferred Payment Agreements (DPA). He also said the Finance Committee of Parliament would meet on the Agreements and present report to the plenary by the end of the month to pave way for construction work to begin. The construction work on infrastructure would include 84-kilometre Accra Inner City roads, 100-km Kumasi Inner City...

Finance and Public Service Minister of Jamaica, Dr Nigel Clarke said during a parliamentary sitting that Jamaica Bauxite Institute (JBI) has received nearly US$1 billion in budgetary support from the Capital Development Fund (CDF) over the last five years. The House approved the withdrawal of US$223 million from the CDF to provide budgetary support to the JBI for the rest of FY2018-19. Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton said he intends to meet with the various stakeholders in the sector mining, including representatives of the mining companies as he anticipates that mining will soon get underway in his constituency in a serious way. Dr Clarke confirmed that the US$223 million of fund will represent about 87 per cent of the total finance required by the JBI for operating expenses and...

Fluor Corporation confirmed on Monday, November 19, that Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée (CBG) achieved first ore at its Bauxite Production Expansion Project in Kamsar. The project reportedly achieved the first ore safely, on budget, and on schedule. Fluor is a global engineering, procurement, fabrication, construction, and maintenance firm headquartered in Irving, Texas, and presently, providing its services to the bauxite production expansion project of CBG. CBG, on the other hand, is a Guinean mining company that has been operating the large bauxite deposit at Sangarédi in the Boké region of Guinea. It is a jointly owned company by the Government of Guinea and the Halco Mining consortium, which includes Alcoa, Rio Tinto and Dadco Investments. “From developing the local craft workforce...

The state-run National Aluminium Company Limited has reportedly decided to bid at the auctions of 21 bauxite blocks to be put up for allocation by the governments of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Madhya Pradesh. According to the report, Nalco will put in bids for captive consumption and start merchant mining of the raw material. Per the Nalco’s statement, the company eyes to step into commercial merchant mining as part of its diversification plans and thus, wish to leverage its expertise in the captive mining of bauxite in eastern state of Odisha. Company officials said: “Some of the prime bauxite reserves would be developed for its own consumption, while production from other blocks would be up for free sale for other aluminium refiners in the country.” The foray into domestic merchant...

Canyon Resources Ltd. discovered a cluster of high-grade, low-containment bauxite trend within its existing resource at Minim Martap Project in Cameroon, said the company’s chief geologist Alexander Shaw. The company reportedly identified this bauxite trend through detailed analysis of remote sensing imagery and previous drilling and field mapping. “We have identified three high-grade bauxite plateaux within the corridor and there is significant potential to identify additional high-grade plateaux along this highly-prospective trend,” said Mr. Shaw. The previous drilling across the high-grade bauxite trend’s three identified plateaux containing resources of 14.51 million tonnes with 49.09% bauxite and 2.35% silica. This month, the company is planning to begin drilling again along with the...

According to an official of the Geological Survey of India (GSI), the remote region of North-east India has mineral reserves worth more than INR 10 lakh crore. However, these mineral reserves which are found in the land-locked region have not been explored. According to Tapan Pal, Director, PSS, GSI, North Eastern Region, if these minerals are explored, they will help the region flourish economically. Mulkh Raj Jarngal, Additional Director General (ADG) and Head of Department, North Eastern Region informed that the three states of Meghalaya, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh have an estimated coal reserve of 1642.64 million tonnes. “In Garo Hills we have estimated coal reserves of about 576.48 million tonnes. But in Khasi Hills we have not been able to carry out exploration due to geological...

The Ministry of Finance and the Public Service has now advised Auditor General Pamela Munroe Ellis that Chinese outfit Jinquan Iron and Steel Company, which operates the Alpart plant in St Elizabeth, has been granted a waiver of the bauxite production levy for five years. Munroe Ellis had raised concerns that a Fiscal Policy Paper tabled earlier this year indicated that the waiver would have ended in March 2018, but was still in effect and has altered the levy collections significantly. In her examination of the interim Fiscal Policy Paper for 2018-19 tabled in Parliament in September, the auditor general noted that the finance ministry subsequently advised that the agreement with Jiugang International Resources Singapore Company Limited, a subsidiary of the JISCO Group of China, would...

An Australian bauxite developer Metallica Minerals Ltd. reportedly announced today, on November 9, that it signed an agreement that would allow the construction of a haul road to link Metallica’s Urquhart Bauxite project and the barge loading facilities at the nearby Hey Point in Queensland. This was standing as a barrier between Metallica and its efforts to secure a Mining Lease for the haul road. So, now when the agreement is signed, Metallica is believed to step on its road to success. It has now met all the requirements for the granting of the lease and is expecting to begin production in the first half of 2019. The news came amid the growing demand for bauxite across the globe. China has been looking for supplies as its own supplies fall thanks to a crackdown on illegal and...

Emirates Global Aluminium announced the arrival of two SD40-2 shunting-locomotives that will be used on its under-construction bauxite mining project in in Guinea. The locomotives will be used to move rail wagons around Guinea Alumina Corporation’s loading area at its mine location and at its unloading platform at Kamsar port on the Guinean coast. Source: Emirates Global Aluminium The locomotives, manufactured in the United States, are power-rated to 3,000 horsepower and can shunt and manœuvre up to 120 fully-laden wagons (weighing more than 10,200 tonnes). GAC’s first bauxite exports are expected to start during the second half of 2019. With a budget of about $1.4 billion, GAC is expected to produce some 12 million tonnes of bauxite per year once fully operational. Paulo Castellari,...

Metro Mining Ltd will increase bauxite production from Bauxite Hills Mine to 3.5 million wet metric tonnes to meet customer demand. The company plans a series of initiatives and will be predominately implemented in Q1 of 2019 during the planned wet season shutdown at Bauxite Hills and long lead items already ordered. Image Source:www.metromining.com.au Metro’s Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Simon Finnis said: “Metro has seen an increase in demand for our bauxite from a range of customers in China. The operation has now produced over 1.6M WMT of bauxite and we have identified low cost and short lead time initiatives to increase production next year. The pay back on the capital would be well within the 2019 calendar year, an excellent return. We have an outstanding platform...

The Australia-based bauxite explorer Canyon Resources announced on November 5 that it appointed a leading mining entrepreneur Mr. Tolga Kumova, who ranked no. 26 on Financial Review’s Young Rich List this year, for the role of strategic advisor. As per the job role assigned, Mr. Kumova will help with the development of Canyon’s bauxite project Minim Martap in Cameroon, by providing strategic direction and advice in relation to the project’s key development activities. Besides, he will be responsible for marketing, sales, and price strategies for bauxite. Mr. Kumova’s appointment in Canyon Resources is intended to ramp up the development of Minim Martap project. In fact, the news of his appointment already moved up the shares by 2 per cent to 22c on Tuesday, November 6. Mr. Kumova is...

Bauxite prices in China’s major market slid by RMB 10 per tonne on Monday, November 5 after remaining unchanged for a week, Shanghai Metals Market data showed. Bauxite (6.0≤Al/Si<7.0) Shanxi price is ranging at RMB 560-600 per tonne, Bauxite (4.5≤Al/Si<5.5) Shanxi is within RMB 470-510 per tonne, Bauxite (4.5≤Al/Si<5.5) Henan is ranging at RMB 450-500 per tonne, and Bauxite (6.0≤Al/Si<7.0) Henan is within RMB 540-550 per tonne. The average prices (per tonne) of the four varieties are RMB 580, RMB 490, RMB 475 and RMB 560 per tonne respectively as on November 5. As for alumina prices are concerned, on Tuesday November 6, the average price remains unchanged at RMB 3107 per tonne today. Average prebaked anode prices in East China, Central China, Southwest China and Northwest China market...