PERTH (miningweekly.com) – ASX-listed Kogi Iron is advancing its Agbaja project, in Nigeria, towards development following successful tests conducted to determine the smelting characteristics of the project’s ore.
Kogi was hoping to build an initial mining operation alongside a 250 000 t/y steel product processing plant at Agbaja. The long-term plan was for a major scale operation of around 5-million tonnes a year.
The plant was expected to have the ability to produce three products, with the possibility of quickly switching between the various product runs, depending on customer demand.
The project was currently estimated to require a capital spend of some $200-million, with the majority of the capital to be spent on infrastructure and the processing plant.
Kogi said on Tuesday that, with the completion of metallurgical testing, the company was moving to finalise a definitive feasibility study on the Agbaja project, which was expected to be complete by the end of June.
Meanwhile, offtake negotiations for the Agbaja product had mostly been centred around steelmakers in Nigeria and Europe.
The company had also stated its intentions to renew negotiations with prospective funding partners for the Agbaja project within the coming weeks, as project funding would likely be raised at both company and project level.
Kogi currently held approvals to explore the Agbaja tenements and was making moves to transition to a mining permit. The company would also amend its environmental-impact statement to reflect the change in scope from the originally planned direct shipping ore mining operation to an integrated mining and sell products project.