Three companies including UAE’s Dubai Aluminium, aiming to develop an alumina project in Cameroon have formally created a joint venture to manage the business, one of the partners said late on Tuesday.
Cameroon Alumina Limited (CAL) which aims to exploit a 1.2 billion tonne bauxite deposit in the central African country, comprises Dubai Aluminium (Dubal), India’s Hindalco Industries and US firm Hydromine.
“The region from where the mineral will be extracted contains about 1.2 billion tonnes of bauxite,” Hydromine’s president Peter Brigger told a news briefing.
“CAL intends to produce 3 to 3.2 million tonnes a year throughout the mining period,” he said.
The consortium intends to invest $5-6 billion in a bauxite mining and refinery project near Ngaoundere, around 400 km to the north of capital Yaounde, plus a railway line linking the complex to the port of Douala, some 600 km away.
Production may begin in 2013, Brigger said. The three firms had already signed deals covering supply of material from the project.
Bauxite is refined into alumina which is then smelted to make aluminium, an industrial metal whose benchmark price on the London Metal Exchange hit a three-year low on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, Cameroon cut its 2009 economic growth forecast for 2009 to 4 percent from an earlier forecast of 6 to 6.5 percent, blaming the global financial crisis for lowering prices of the oil and metals it exports.
Prime Minister Ephraim Inoni previously indentified mining projects as key to Cameroon’s growth, but metals prices have fallen sharply in recent months. (Reuters)
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