Mubadala, Guinea agree on alumina refinery

Guinea signed an accord with a unit of Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Development Co. to build an alumina refinery expected to attract an estimated $5 billion in foreign investment into the West African nation over eight years.

Guinea, the world’s largest exporter of bauxite which makes aluminum, signed an agreement with Guinea Alumina Corp. Ltd., a joint venture owned by Mubadala and Dubai Aluminium Co. Ltd, Mubadala said in an e-mailed statement.

“This agreement will deliver an estimated $5 billion of foreign investment into Guinea over the next eight years,” Lamine Fofana, Guinea minister of mines and geology, said in the statement. “The development plan will create at peak 14,000 direct and indirect jobs and contribute substantially to Guinea’s gross domestic product.”

The agreement provides for the construction of a bauxite export mine in Sangaredi that will be operational and the development of a port in Kamsar by 2017, according to the statement. It also stipulates the construction of an alumina refinery with an initial capacity of 2 million tons a year, with works due to begin in 2018 and commercial production expected to begin in 2022, it said.

Mubadala is owned by the government of Abu Dhabi, the largest sheikhdom of the United Arab Emirates. State-owned Dubai Aluminium, known as Dubal, operates a one million metric ton a year aluminum smelter at Jebel Ali in Dubai - the world’s largest single-site primary aluminum smelter using pre-bake anode technology, the statement said.

Guinea announced plans to more than triple bauxite production capacity by 2020 as Chinese demand for the metal is forecast to rise, according to a March 15 statement from Guinean President Alpha Conde’s office.