CM Group projected Chinese demand for bauxite to increase by 65-70 million tonnes a year over the next five to seven years. It will be driven primarily by upcoming new alumina refining capacity, about 60 per cent of whose demand will be met by imported bauxite.
Metro Mining has recently entered sales contracts with their Chinese clients for a total of 780,000 tonnes of bauxite which will be delivered in 2018 and 2019.This is opening doors for other emerging miners in Australia such as Metallica Minerals.
{alcircleadd}Metallica is developing the Urquhart bauxite deposit, discovered in late 2014 on the Cape York Peninsula in far north Queensland in a joint venture with a Chinese company. It is noteworthy that Metallica is on the verge of being a commercial producer after little more than three years of working on the mine development.
It’s now awaiting government approval to construct a haul road from the project site to the nearby port of Hey Point so that they can ship the output. Urquhart is expected to produce 6.5 million tonnes of commercial bauxite in the first five years.
As soon as the company gets approval for the construction of haul road, it will take just four to six weeks to bring Metallica’s Australian dollar1 million Urquhart project into production. The project is fully funded, and Metallica has 6.1 million dollar in cash for further investment on the project. It is not signing any offtake agreement until it can be sure of the date when they would be ready to start shipping the ore.
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