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Kenya’s first export shipment of titanium ores from the Kwale Mineral Sands project deposits will consist of 100 tonnes of rutile, officials have announced.
Officials at Base Titanium indicated yesterday that the rutile shipment will go out as containerised cargo from the Mombasa Port Container terminal heading to Japan.
According to Base Titanium General Manager, External Affairs Development Joe Schwarz, 25,000 metric tonnes of ilmenite will be shipped in from its own port handling facility in Likoni during the first week of February 2014.
“We do have international customers already lined up apart from Japan in far flung nations of the USA, Europe, China and the Middle East,’’ he said.
Base Titanium announced in late December it had applied for its first export permit from the Ministry of Mining for the first shipments of titanium products from its giant mines.
“These first shipments represents key milestones in the development of the country’s first large scale state of the art mining project,” the firm had said in an earlier statement.
Rutile is a mineral which may contain up to 10 per cent iron and significant amounts of niobium and tantalum, which can be used in electronic equipment such as mobile phones, DVD players, video games systems and computers.
“Base Titanium expects to send out approximately 15 bulkier shipments a year from our own port facility so there will be a shipment every three to four weeks,” Schwarz said.
Create employment
In addition to creating employment, facilitating technology, skills transfer and contributing to community development over its 13 year life span, the $305 million (Sh26 billion) project is expected to contribute approximately $220 million (Sh19 billion) to government revenue in direct tax and royalty payments. Base Titanium states further that US $800 million (Sh68 billion) is being spent in operating the mine, bringing with it substantial economic multiplier benefits boosting industrialisation towards achieving Vision 2030 goals.
Titanium mining output of refined products will be about 330,000 metric tonnes of ilmunite, 80,000 metric tonnes of rutile and 40,000 metric tonnes of zircon annually.
The bulk of these products, Base Titanium observed, have already been contracted under long-term offtake agreements.