JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – London-listed Ruukki Group on Friday said its Mecklenburg chrome mine, in Limpopo, had been fully commissioned.
The Mecklenburg mining right is held by Ruukki’s 37.74%-owned subsidiary Chromex Mining Company and is valid until June 2018.
During the second half of 2012, Chromex entered into a lease agreement with the Magadimana Ntweng Traditional Community, the owners of the Mecklenburg farm, which was followed shortly by the establishment of the opencast mine.
Ruukki said it expected to maintain the mine’s current production capacity of 25 000 metric tons of chrome a month, all of which is sold into the market as a run-of-mine product.
At the current production level, the company estimated the project’s opencast mining life to reach completion at the end of 2014, after which it would evaluate the possibility of continuing operations underground.