KIOCL Ltd will take a final call soon on the proposed iron ore project in Mauritania (West Africa). KIOCL CMD Malay Chatterjee told Business Line the due diligence exercise initiated after a preliminary agreement early this year, is expected to be over in the next four weeks.
“The Board of KIOCL would take the decision based on the assigned consultants’ report,” Chatterjee said.
The public sector miner had signed a non-binding agreement on March 5 with Curve Capital Ventures Ltd, for its Akjoujt asset in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania in West African desert area.
Curve Resources, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Curve Capital, holds the prospecting licence for the 938-sq. km deposit and undertook some exploration activities.
The London-based venture capital fund wants KIOCL as a strategic partner for further exploration, mining and development of the licence area.
The proposed project will need procuring exploration environmental clearance and preparation of the terms of reference for mining in the whole concession area also evaluating the logistics of the mining, processing and trading operations.
“Logistics is a challenge. The operation and cost of evacuation of the pellets to the consuming markets, including India, would be large-scale and will require commensurate investments. All these, including cross-border legal issues, are to be looked into in next few weeks,” the KIOCL CMD said.
According to Curve Capital, the location of the asset is about 250 km from the nearest shipping port. “Given the significant quantity of the deposit, quality parameters of the ore, and the logistical convenience, the project can easily sustain a feasible large scale mining and an output of pellet grade iron ore concentrate of more than 10 million tonnes a year for at least 50 years,” it claimed.