Things seem to be accelerating for the Chalco Guinea Company, a subsidiary of the Chinalco Group. Six months after the signing of its 15-year mining agreement with Guinea, the Chinese company officially started on Sunday (October 28th) its integrated bauxite-alumina project in Boffa, in the north-west corridor of the country.
This operating agreement is part of the agreement “mining resources against financial loans” between Guinea and China. This highly strategic fire baptism for the Middle Kingdom took place in the presence of the Guinean Prime Minister Kassory Fofana, and Du Xiaowen, the number one of the Chinalco group to whom the Anglo-Australian giant Rio Tinto surrendered in October 2016 , blocks 3 and 4 of South Simandou.
This project will take place in two phases: the first will be the exploitation of the bauxite resources of Boffa North and South; Chalco will proceed with the construction and operation of a bauxite mine with an initial capacity of 12 million tonnes per year. The second phase of the project will focus on the construction of an alumina refinery for the transformation of some of the bauxite resources.
The entry into service of Chalco in the Guinean mines, whose first production is scheduled for 2019, and definitively seals the strategic rapprochement between Guinea and China.
