africa in March 2014 and will mine relatively low grade 1.7 percent heavy mineral sands .
Now in the “ ramping-up ”, commissioning phase of the project , Finnis is eager to start seeing the fruits of the organisation ’ s labour .
“ The project itself is fully integrated and starts off with us mining a large sand dune with our dredge .” he said . “ We then process that sand through a mineral concentrator - a floating wet concentrator – which separates the sand from the heavy minerals using gravity techniques , creating a heavy mineral concentrate .
“ This concentrate is pumped to a storage area , and we place the clean sand , using pumps , pipelines and stackers , behind us .
“ What you end up with is a big pond where we take from the front and put it in the back , so the whole pond continues to move along the mine path following the ore body .”
The mining operation will , at full production , mine and process at a staggering production rate of 55 million tonnes per annum . Over a projected lifecycle of at least 15 years , this equates to more than a billion tonnes of resources , with nearly 800 million in reserve .
The heavy mineral concentrate is then trucked to the operation ’ s mineral separation plant where it is put through further stages of processing , all of which culminates in approximate annualised production of 575,000 tonnes of ilmenite ( two grades ), 80,000t of Zircon ( two grades ) and smaller amounts of Rutile and Leucoxene .
Grande Côte Operations
With construction complete and mining underway , the Grande Côte Mineral Sands Project is one of only a few major new projects globally that is set to take advantage of the supply-constrained mineral sands sector .
Grande Côte is located in Senegal , west Africa . Having gained independence in 1960 , Senegal enjoys a stable and investor friendly political and social environment . The government of the Republic of Senegal is a valued partner and holds a 10 % free carried interest in the project .
Mineralisation
www . mineraldeposits . com . au / grande-cote-mineral-sands 99