The Mozambique government has granted locally domiciled company Minas do Revúboè a concession to mine coal at its project in Tete province. Revúboè is a joint venture between Australian junior Talbot Group Investments, which has a 58.9% holding, Japan’s Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation (NSSM) and Nippon Steel Trading Company (jointly 33.3%) and South Korea’s Posco (7.8%).
Revúboè has inferred resources of 1.4- billion tons of coal, of which 70% is hard coking, or metallurgical, coal, of a quality comparable to Australian hard coking coal, and 30% is thermal coal. The licensed property covers 3 860 ha and the project is adjacent to Vale’s Moatize coal mine and Rio Tinto’s Benga operation.
Development of the new mine should start before the end of this year and commercial production is planned to start at the beginning of 2016. The mine will have an annual production capacity of five-million tons of coking coal. Of this, 1.7-million tons of coking coal will go to NSSM, which is Japan’s biggest steelmaker. (The company was formed in October when Nippon Steel merged with Sumitomo Metal Industries.) This will represent 6% of the steel group’s annual coking coal imports. For the export of its output, it is currently expected that Revúboè will share upgraded rail and port infrastructure with the other mining companies now operating in Tete.
A week earlier, Anglo American plc announced that it had abandoned plans to buy Talbot’s share in the project for $555-million. The reason given was that certain conditions for the purchase had not been met. The group refused to disclose what these conditions were, citing confidentiality clauses.
The London-listed miner affirmed that it “expects to continue with its objective of establishing a position in the emerging metallurgical coal basin in Mozambique”. At the Coaltrans Mozambique conference in Maputo, in November, Anglo American head of business development: iron-ore and coal James Harman stated: “We have been interested in Mozambique coal for many years, but we are a bit late to the party.” His company only opened a representative office in Mozambique last year.
Meanwhile, it has emerged that the development of the coal mines in Tete province has boosted the economy of the neighbouring province of Sofala. The port city of Beira, through which all Tete’s coal is currently exported, is in Sofala.
The transport of cargo now accounts for more than half of revenues in the transport and communications sector in the coastal province. Of this, the major part is coal from Moatize. In monetary terms, the transport of coal brought revenues of seven-million meticais (some $230 000 or about R2.03-million) to the Sofala transport and communications industry last year.
The coal sector has also greatly stimulated passenger traffic between Tete and Beira, both by air and by rail. In 2012, passenger traffic on the railways in Sofala came to 418-million passenger kilometres, more than double the figure for 2011. And most of this traffic was on the Sena line to Tete.
To allow it to handle the growing flow of coal, a new ocean dredger has been ordered for the port of Beira. Built in Lithuania, the new vessel, named the Macúti, was launched in October and started its sea trials in February and should reach Beira by the middle of this year. It is a suction dredger and has a hopper capacity of 2 500 m3.
The entry into service of the Macúti will allow the deepening of the shipping channel into Beira harbour to a depth of at least 8 m, allowing bigger ships to reach the coal terminal and so speeding coal exports. Beira’s two current dredgers, the Alcântara Santos and the Aruângua, each have a hooper capacity of only 1 000 m3. Beira’s main channel needs to be dredged every day.