Chinese consortium's initiative to source Guinea bauxite will sideline India

The US$ 200 million worth bauxite mining project that Singapore-based Winning International Group has planned to start in the Boke region of western Guinea of Africa, through its formed consortium will sideline traditional suppliers like India, Australia, and Indonesia.

Winning plans to export 30 million tonnes a year of bauxite ore from the new mine in Guinea to China. This comes in the wake of a spate of recent developments in the bauxite market which saw Australia imposing restrictions on bauxite mining for environmental reasons, Indonesia virtually banning export, and the Indian bauxite getting lower in quality.

Till now, Winning had been transporting between three to four million tonnes of bauxite ore a year from India's western shores to China. Bosco Lau Chi Wah, chief executive officer of the group's Winning Logistics Services Pte Ltd, estimates India exports 10 million tonnes of bauxite ore a year to China. However, he observed, "the Indian bauxite ore quality is getting lower in aluminium content."

In comparison to that, Guinea has good quality bauxite reserves of 7.4 billion tonnes, or 26 per cent of the world's total deposits. The group's mine alone has reserves of 100 million tonnes of 42 per cent to 45 per cent aluminium content.

According to the consortium sources, the new project will initially start with five million tonnes of bauxite exports from Guinea this year, and increase it to 30 million tonnes in two years.