Annual Report to Shareholders
Sydney, Mar 30, 2012 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Australian Bauxite Limited (
ASX:ABZ) achieved its objectives during 2011 and the outlook remains positive for 2012 as the company progresses from an explorer to a bauxite development-exploration company.
Total company bauxite resources doubled to 84 million tonnes during the year and two potentially economic projects have been identified in the Goulburn area of southern New South Wales and the Binjour project 100km inland from Bundaberg Port in central Queensland. Two other projects are also showing potential as detailed in the operations review of this annual report.
Since listing at 20 cents on 24 December 2009, the Company's share price has been commendably robust in a volatile market - testimony to its basic strengths. Its 38 bauxite tenements in QLD, NSW and Tasmania covering 8,539km2 were rigorously selected on 3 principles:
1. high quality bauxite that can be refined into alumina at low temperature - the type that is increasingly in short supply, especially for the large Chinese refineries that rely on bauxite imports.
2. proximity to infrastructure connected to export ports
3. free of socio-environmental or native title land constraints.
All tenements are 100% owned and free of obligations for processing and third party royalties. Australian Bauxite Limited aspires to identify large bauxite resources in the Eastern Australian Bauxite Province, which is emerging as one of the world's best bauxite provinces, with the potential to create significant bauxite developments in three states - QLD, NSW and Tasmania.
Australian Bauxite Limited endorses best practices on agricultural land, striving to leave land and environment better than we find it. We operate only where welcomed.
The year ahead will create more opportunities and challenges. The recent destructive flooding in eastern Australia has had a small impact on our drill programs due to risk management by an experienced exploration team and the geographic diversity of the Company's exploration tenements.
Our most advanced project is the Goulburn Bauxite Project centred on Goulburn and Taralga in southern NSW. In conjunction with the Marubeni Group, we are currently conducting a $1.5 million pre-feasibility study to assess how best to progress that project. We will report the results of the pre-feasibility study in the second quarter.
Our projects will sell high quality bauxite, probably to alumina refineries in China, India and potentially within Australia. The bauxite market is not directly related to the aluminium metal market which is experiencing a significant reduction in the cost of making aluminium in the giant, new-age aluminium smelters that use new technologies and cheap electricity in China, Middle East, Iceland and Russia.
The world's largest markets for bauxite are the large, new Chinese alumina refineries which are increasingly importing bauxite from Australia and Indonesia to refine into alumina (aluminium oxide powder) which they then smelt into aluminium metal. Chinese bauxite imports have risen from zero in early 2005 to more than 45 million tonnes in 2011 - and still growing strongly. Bauxite prices have risen from US$27 per tonne in 2005 to US$75 per tonne in 2007 before the global financial crisis and are currently steadily rising towards US$60 and beyond. This has happened whilst aluminium prices have remained flat. Our forecast is for this strengthening in the bauxite market to continue because Indonesia has already started to apply restrictions on bauxite exports to China as it develops its own aluminium industry.
These market developments will continue to support seaborne trade of bauxite particularly from politically stable countries with reliable, efficient transport logistics.
The potential for substantial value accretion for the Company shareholders look promising.
The Directors would like to thank management, staff and our consultants for their enthusiastic teamwork and achievements over the past year. On behalf of the Board, shareholders and management I especially thank our founding Chairman, Peter Meers who has taken a supportive executive role and will serve as Deputy Chairman. We look ahead to another year of high achievement and growth.
View the complete Annual Report here:
http://media.abnnewswire.net/media/en/docs/ASX-ABZ-673300.pdf
About ABx Group Limited
ABx Group Limited (ABx) (ASX:ABX) started as a bauxite miner in Tasmania in 2014 & controls the Eastern Australian Bauxite Province. In 2020 to 2023, ABx also discovered Australia’s only true ionic adsorption clay Rare Earth Elements resource at Deep Leads in pine plantations 40km west of Launceston with a JORC-compliant resource of 89 million tonnes from only 29% of the mineralised outline, averaging 844 ppm total rare earth oxides that is the most enriched in the critically important rare earths, Dy and Tb, of any Australian REE deposit.
ABx has also developed a proprietary technology to produce fluorine chemicals from an aluminium smelter waste product and return the fluorine back into the smelters, thus reducing reliance on imported aluminium fluoride.
ABx has committed a large proportion of its expenditure into Research and Development and has found ways to capitalise on the main strengths of its bauxite type which is very clean, free of all deleterious elements and can be separated into different product streams using physical, chemical and geophysical methods. It has produced and marketed specialist bauxite products for the manufacturers of fertiliser, cement with high late strength for major infrastructure such as bridges and is in the advanced stages of approvals for production of metallurgical bauxite from its Binjour Bauxite deposit with JORC-compliant resources of 37 million tonnes of bauxite, in a joint development with a Chinese-focussed Australian trading company Good Importing International.
ABx is also preparing to produce fertiliser grade and cement grade bauxite from its DL130 bauxite quarry in northern Tasmania, 40km west of Launceston. This quarry is sited in the middle of the large Deep Leads REE deposit and may one day be a site for heap leaching of the REE using a low-cost, benign leachate with the same acidity as apple juice or tea.
ABx endorses best practices on agricultural land, strives to leave land and environment better than we find it. We only operate where welcomed.
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