Strategic Mineral Status Drives South African Fluorspar Project

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Written by Richard Finlayson, Senior International Editor for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Fluorspar's status has been raised to "strategic mineral" in the U.S. and Europe, which is driving a South African fluorspar explorer to become a miner and fluoro-chemical producer. This week, it opened its rich fluorspar resource site for inspection by the media. The site is adjacent to the established Vergenoeg fluorspar mine. The site is 80 kilometers north of the country's administrative capital Pretoria.

The plan for the new company, SepFluor, is to construct a $112 million concentrator and a $150 million fluoro-chemicals hub at Ekundustria, which is 50 kilometers from the mine site at the light industrial and agricultural center of Bronkhorstspruit. The capital will be raised through a mixture of debt and equity in local and international markets, before the company goes on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange (JSE) in 2013.

Construction on SepFluor's mine and concentrator project is scheduled to start in the fourth quarter of 2012, with production scheduled for the second quarter of 2014. The current estimate for the life of the mine, with production from two of its three deposits, is 19 years.

The opencast mine production is pegged at between 130,000 and 185,000 tons a year of acid-grade fluorspar for the fluoro-chemical beneficiation hub and 30,000 tons a year of metallurgical grade for local and export steel markets. The fluoro-chemical hub construction will keep pace with the mine development, with the first production of hydrogen fluoride, aluminum tri-fluoride and anhydrite coming in the second quarter of 2014.

Local and international aluminum smelters will be supplied with 60,000 tons a year of aluminum tri-fluoride, which will be sourced from 42,000 tons a year of hydrogen fluoride from the hub. A further 18,000 tons will be available for metal pickling and for other fluoro-chemical initiatives. The hydrogen fluoride plant also could produce 216,000 tons a year of anhydrite for cement and fertilizer applications.

SepFluor is currently held privately by 800 shareholders. The South African government is supporting the fluoro-chemical development through beneficiation of locally mined fluorspar. South Africa has the world's largest reserves of fluorspar but an insignificant share of the fluoro-chemicals market.

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