LONDON Dec 20 (Reuters) – Global miner Anglo American
has exported the first shipment from the $1 billion
Kolomela iron ore mine in South Africa, one of its key growth
projects, putting the mine ahead of schedule and on track to
achieve full production by 2013.
Kolomela, one of the projects expected to drive organic
volume growth for Anglo, has been commissioned five months ahead
of schedule and on budget, the miner said.
Kolomela, a 9-million tonne per year iron ore mine in the
Northern Cape, is the third of four key operations to come
online for Anglo, after the Barro Alto nickel project in Brazil
in March and the expansion of the Los Bronces copper mine in
Chile in November. The fourth project in the pipeline is the
giant Minas-Rio iron ore operation in Brazil, which is set to
begin full production in the second half of 2013.
“The first shipment of 100,000 tonnes of Kolomela lump ore
left the port of Saldanha on 19 December 2011,” Chris Griffith,
CEO of Anglo American’s Kumba Iron Ore business, said.
“The commissioning of the Kolomela project is in line with
our growth strategy of ramping our South African production up
to 70 million tonnes per year by 2019.”
Kolomela had been expected to deliver initial production at
the end of the first half of 2012.
Kumba Iron Ore owns 74 percent of the Sishen, Thabazimbi and
Kolomela mines.
© Thomson Reuters 2011 All rights reserved
