Australia’s only listed pure bauxite producer Metro Mining (ASX:MMI) is poised to complete the 75% expansion of its Bauxite Hills Mine in Queensland in early 2024.
In May 2023, the $100.36 million market capitalisation company made a final investment decision (FID) to expand the mine to 7 million tonnes per annum of bauxite production having completed studies, sourced funding, and procured assets.
The company recently launched its new logo, coinciding with the execution of its expansion strategy.
Metro Mining is one of the few junior resource companies of the past decade to graduate from explorer to producer with the 2018 commissioning of its greenfield Bauxite Hills mine adjacent to the Skardon River, 95km north of Weipa in Cape York.
Metro producers a high alumina direct shipping ore and is the only Australian producer to ship in large Capesize vessels to the market. Based in a low sovereign risk country and only 9 days sailing to Chinese coast compared to 2 months from biggest competitor, Guinea in West Africa.
Addressing the company’s transition, Metro Mining CEO Simon Wensley says: “We are excited to launch our new logo which reflects our commitment to sustainability and our role in the transition to a lower carbon economy. Aluminium is an essential manufacturing material today and, in the future, and we are proud to be a leading supplier of bauxite for its production.”
Metro Mining’s 75% expansion includes significant investment occurring in mobile equipment, screens, and fixed plant and additional transhipping assets. At its expanded rate, the company is expected to constitute about 25% of Australian bauxite exports and has a reserve life of 15 years, with additional resources subject to definition.
“Aluminium is an essential manufacturing material today and, in the future, and we are proud to be a leading supplier of bauxite for its production”
Processing of bauxite ore via the Bayer process is still the only way to make alumina. Alumina is then smelted to primary aluminium via the Hall- Héroult process.
Already one of the world’s most important construction and packaging materials, aluminium is also critical in the transition towards the lower carbon economy, particularly in global transportation and electricity generation/networks over the next decades.
Aluminium is highly conductive and strong but is one third the density of steel and copper and so has many versatile and varied end uses with demand expected to grow by more than 40% between 2020 and 2023.
The use of aluminium alloys in auto bodies has been growing strongly in the last 2 decades mainly for ‘light-weighting’, but automakers are equally interested in the metal’s good durability, superior corrosion resistance, as well as improved maintenance thanks to new tools and techniques.
Some cars have been produced with 90% aluminium content and now there is new growth impetus as aluminium is the second largest material by weight in EV batteries, which will see the global car industry increase its aluminium consumption by 60% by 2030.
According to the World Bank, and International Energy Agency, due to its essential requirement in almost every energy technology, across all the climate change scenarios, aluminium will demonstrate the greatest absolute increase in demand of the 11 most important non-ferrous metals resulting from the energy transition. For example, aluminium constitutes approximately 85% by weight of the metal in solar PV panels.
Write to Adam Orlando at Mining.com.au
Images: Metro Mining Ltd
