Bauxite Shipment Finalised
Sydney, May 8, 2019 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Australian Bauxite Limited (
ASX:ABX) (ABx, ASX Code ABX) had produced and loaded 32,477 tonnes of bauxite onto the customer's ship at Bell Bay Port which is in the upper range of the contracted tonnage target of 30,000 to 33,000 of cement-grade bauxite. Grades are better than contract, as is usual for ABx.
- ABx sale tonnage of 32,477 tonnes measured by independent draught survey
- Additional orders of fertiliser-grade received earlier than expectation
- Favourable foreign exchange rate is encouraging for negotiations for next shipments
- ABx could benefit from larger-sized bulk-carrier ships from northern Tasmania
Production of additional bauxite-products continued at the Bald Hill Bauxite Project until late April.
More orders of fertiliser-grade bauxite have been received, which confirms that ABx bauxite has clean chemistry, ideal for acid-processing to produce high quality fertiliser increasingly in demand. ABx's ALCORE bauxite refining technology also exploits this ideal acid-processing performance.
Falling A$-US$ exchange rates increases ABx's bauxite competitiveness - see market summary Appendix(see link below).
Shipping is priced in US$ dollars and is increasingly important for Tasmanian exporters. ABx needs to use the largest possible ships from northern Tasmanian ports and notes that proposals to increase the maximum ship-size at Burnie Port to 75,000 tonnes in the near-term are being investigated.
Load-rate: 14,760 tonnes per day. Better than contract. QUBE Ports stevedores excelled.
Mine and screen production rates achieved by the ABx mine team and Hazell Bros contractors were above target due to improvements and innovations introduced during this operation.
Trucking delivered 33,000 tonnes to the port stockpile at Bell Bay weeks before ship arrival. Trucking was done by Dave Wagner & Son Pty Ltd which has a proven record of handling the ABx bauxite efficiently and with care shown for the public, the product and the customer, ABx.
ABx was please to work with TasPorts to secure a permanent stockpile location at Bell Bay Port.
Additional product stockpiles have been achieved, including fertiliser-grade bauxite, cement-grade bauxite and sizeable stockpiles of ALCORE refinery-grade bauxite. A sample of several tonnes of this refinery-grade bauxite will be supplied to the ALCORE Research Centre in Berkeley Vale, Central Coast NSW for refining into Aluminium Fluoride for potential customers to evaluate.
ABx has accumulated a significant quantity of ALCORE refinery-grade bauxite and is conducting an ore reserve estimation of that material.
Bald Hill Bauxite Project in Tasmania has the potential to accumulate several year's supply of ALCORE refinery-grade bauxite at marginal cost, should ALCORE Limited require it for a production-plant in Bell Bay, Tasmania.
Rehabilition has been carried out over the past months in accordance with ABx standard practice of reforming the land surface in readiness for pasture seeding in the right seasonal period.
ABx shares the concerns of local landholders about drought conditions that have affected Tasmania during recent times. ABx hopes it can still carry out seeding in the next few weeks, rain permitting.
Seasonal Complementation With Binjour Bauxite Project, QLD
Binjour project will be at maximum production during the Queensland Dry Season from April to November. ABx's bauxite mines in Tasmania achieve optimum production in Summer months from November to May. ABx's marketing partner, Rawmin of India has bauxite mines in north-western India that are restricted by the Monsoon months June to September each year.
This bauxite mining and screening operation at Bald Hill in Tasmania has confirmed that coordinated production and shipments from all 3 sets of mines will achieve a reliable year-round delivery to the customer of bauxite at a consistent specification.
All bauxite is gibbsite-rich trihydrate (THA) bauxite with very low content of the monohydrate alumina minerals boehmite and diaspore which require high temperature refining.
These bauxite specifications in Table 1 (see link below) are ideally suited for low-temperature alumina refineries.
To view tables and figures, please visit:
http://abnnewswire.net/lnk/COL62P6J
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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