JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The building of the Tormin mineral sands mine on South Africa’s West Coast is due to commence in April, the Australian Stock Exchange- (ASX-) listed Mineral Commodities Limited (MCL) says.
MCL has also renewed its prospecting rights at the proposed Xolobeni mineral sands in the Eastern Cape.
MRC executive chairman Mark Caruso and directors Guy Walker, James Leahy, Joseph Caruso and Peter Torre – who will be in Cape Town to attend the Mining Indaba – as well as Cape Town-based CEO Andrew Lashbrooke, will accompany members of the local government, Department of Mineral Resources and the media on a tour of the Tormin site on February 7.
Tormin, 400 km north of Cape Town, has beach deposits of zircon, rutile and ilmenite.
Its black economic-empowerment partner Blue Bantry has a 50% share of the asset, MCL says in a media release.
The mine has an expected life of up to five years and the company is confident that the offshore area, which is the source of the minerals and to which MRC has recently been awarded the prospecting rights, will replenish the beach and extend the mine life by at least a further five years.
The building phase will create 40 local jobs and the mining phase up to 100 jobs.
“We see the project as making a significant contribution,” says Matzikama mayor Delina Goedeman.
Xolobeni, which is said to contain some nine-million tons of ilmenite, is expected to employ 600 people and have a 25-year life-of-mine.