Privately-owned Kanga Potash has been granted a mining and production licence for the Kanga potash project, in Congo-Brazzaville.
The company now has all the necessary regulatory consents in place as it enters the pre-construction phase of the project.
The Kanga licence areas cover 320 km2 and is located 32 km north of the country’s Pointe Noire economic hub, on the Atlantic coast.
The project, to be built at an estimated cost of $457-million, will produce 600 000 t/y of muriate of potash for more than 30 years.
Kanga says the project’s plant design ensures there are options for production to be increased to more than 2.4-million tonnes a year, as and when market conditions allow.
Export credit agencies have committed to provide debt funding for up to 85% of the required capital expenditure.
The company is being advised by Vermilion Partners and Natixis on future funding options as it approaches the final investment decision stage for the project.
Kanga also has two letters of intent for offtake in place from reputable companies, and will soon finalise its most appropriate offtake strategy.
“It is vital that the world develops new fertiliser resources to meet the existential need to feed a growing world population. Kanga Potash . . . is well placed to be a key provider of potash to the growing world market owing to its massive tier 1 resource in close proximity to the coast, which ensures market-leading economic outputs for the project,” says chairperson Stéphane Rigny.
CEO Achim Strauss adds that demand for fertilisers and pricing looks likely to remain strong for some time, but as developers of a long-term, low-cost project, Kanga’s focus is on the multidecade drivers of demand.
“We see these as robust, led by the increase in global population and desire of the world to reduce the carbon impact of fertiliser production.”