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IRON ORE
August 2015
MODERN MINING
39
The Canga camp of Rio
Tinto’s Simandou project in
Guinea (photo: Rio Tinto).
through the production of lump products.”
Kumba also announced in July that it had
instituted closing procedures for its
Thabazimbi
mine in Limpopo Province, by far the smallest
of its three mines. It has given several reasons
for this decision including the fact that the
mine is now more than 80 years old and has
– over the past 15 years – had its closure post-
poned six times; difficult mining conditions;
high operating costs due to high waste stripping
requirements; and a recent slope failure. One
suspects, however, there might have been some
chance of keeping the mine operating if the iron
ore price environment were more buoyant.
Kumba and Assmang (which owns the
Beeshoek and Khumani mines in the Northern
Cape) are the two main players in South Africa’s
iron ore mining industry but there are several
aspirants, among them Ferrum Crescent, listed
on the ASX and AIM, which has the
Moonlight
project in Limpopo Province, and AIM-listed
Ferrex, which is developing the 1,8 Mt/a
Malelane
project. Ferrex announced earlier this
year that Malelane had been placed on hold
because of the low iron ore price (it is now con-
centrating its energies on its Nayega manganese
project in northern Togo) but Ferrum Crescent
appears to be hard at work on the development
of Moonlight, now in the BFS phase.
The project involves the mining and ben-
eficiation of the Moonlight magnetite deposit
– which was explored in the 1980s and 90s by
Iscor – to produce a high-grade concentrate for
transport to a pellet manufacturing facility at
or near the town of Thabazimbi for the pro-
duction of 6 Mt/a of Direct Reduction (DR) and
blast furnace grade iron pellets for export or
domestic sale.
InMay this year, FerrumCrescent announced
it had signed an MoU with Principle Monarchy
Investments (PMI) – described as “a BEE con-
trolled South African company with extensive
commercial interests in South Africa.” In terms
of the MoU, PMI will acquire a 39 % stake in
the project for a consideration of R142 million,
with the incoming funds to be directed towards
the BFS, with the next key stages to include
large scale pit design and sampling work and
assessment of the need for a bulk sample, as
well as definitive metallurgical testing for full
process design. In its latest quarterly report
(issued at the end of July), Ferrum Crescent said
it was expecting the first R2 million interim
funding payment shortly (upon receipt of
which the MoU will become legally binding).
A major advantage that South African proj-
ects have as opposed to those further north
in Africa is that (current power constraints
notwithstanding) they have access to gener-
ally good infrastructure. In the rest of Africa,
developing iron ore deposits often means
that mining companies have to address huge
infrastructure deficits. This is the case with
Sundance’s
Mbalam-Nabeba
project, for exam-
ple, which – to get into Stage 1 production of
35 Mt/a of Direct Shipping Ore (DSO) – needs
a 510 km rail line from Mbarga in Cameroon
(and a 70 km rail spur connecting to Nabeba
A major
advantage that
South African
projects have
as opposed to
those further
north in Africa
is that (current
power constraints
notwithstanding)
they have access
to generally good
infrastructure.