Societe Nationale Industrielle et Miniere (SNIM), based in Nouadhibou, Mauritania, has announced plans to set up a 4 million-tons-per-year concentrated iron ore plant in the African nation’s Al-Zouerate region.
According to Industrial Info Resources, Sugar Land, Texas, the plant is expected to be completed and ready for operation by 2011. The plant is part of an expansion project for SNIM, the national iron ore company of Mauritania, that includes a new seaport at Nouadhibou and an expansion of an existing mine.
The new port will replace an existing one and is scheduled to be operational from 2012. The port initially would be built with a handling capacity of about 170,000 tons, but it is expected to increase to more than 250,000 tons in the future, according to IIR.
In December of 2009, SNIM procured a $710 million loan from four institutions and four commercial banks to fund the expansion plan. The institutions include the African Development Bank, based in Côte d’Ivoire; the European Investment Bank, based in Luxembourg; the French Development Bank, based in Paris; and the Islamic Development Bank, based in Saudi Arabia.
The commercial banks are Societe Generale, based in Paris; KfW IPEX-Bank GmbH, based in Frankfurt, Germany; BNP Paribas SA, also based in Paris; and BHF-Bank International SA, based in Luxembourg. Montreal-based SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. will reportedly play a large role in the engineering and construction aspects of the project.
Mauritania’s SNIM is the largest producer of iron ore in North Africa and the second largest in all of Africa, according to IIR. The company expects its iron ore production and sales to reach 11.4 million tons in 2010, an estimate that is about 10 percent higher than 2009’s production of 10.4 million tons. When the new plant is fully operational, the production capacity of the facility is expected to reach 16 million tons per year by 2013.
Source: Recycling Today
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