Sphere looking for new partners for iron ore mine in Mauritania
September 7th, 2008 | by mantrionline |Australia’s Sphere Investments Limited has held fresh talks with potential investors to help develop an iron ore mine in Mauritania.
Sphere and its local partner in the USD 2.2 billion Guelb el Aouj project, Societe Nationale Industrielle et Miniere, have been looking for fresh backing after Qatar Steel backed out of a plan to take a 15% stake.
The pullout came around two weeks after soldiers seized Mauritanian President Mr Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi at his palace after he sacked senior army officers during a political crisis.
Sphere Investments said that its current search for a new strategic partner for its advanced magnetite iron ore project in Mauritania could potentially increase planned maiden production.
Mr Alex Burns MD of Sphere said that it had in the past four weeks received strong interest in taking up an available strategic stake in Sphere’s Guelb el Aouj project.
A definitive feasibility study earlier this year endorsed proceeding with the financing and development of a 30 year, 7 million tonnes per annum DR pellet project at Guelb el Aouj via open pit mining.
Mr Burns said that Sphere is about to appoint a major investment major bank to identify a new strategic partner for the project, and an announcement on that appointment was due shortly. He added that “While we had Qatar as partners in the past two years, we were at the same time receiving a lot of approaches from iron and steel companies about the project.”
He added that “All major international steel and iron ore companies have looked at Mauritania in the past two years seeking an entry point in to what is the seventh largest iron ore supplier in the seaborne traded market. Now that the opportunity has opened itself to bring in a new strategic partner who can underwrite the equity for the project, we not surprisingly have had a strong and resurgent level of interest from major mining and steel companies in taking up that stake.”
Sphere has at least 4 other magnetite projects in Mauritania under exploration.
