[miningmx.com] — ANGLO American has exported the first shipment from the $1bn Kolomela iron ore mine, one of its key growth projects, putting the mine ahead of schedule and on track to achieve full production by 2013.
Kolomela, one of the projects expected to drive organic volume growth for Anglo, has been commissioned five months ahead of schedule and on budget, the miner said.
Kolomela, a 9-million tonne per year iron ore mine in the Northern Cape, is the third of four key operations to come online for Anglo, after the Barro Alto nickel project in Brazil in March and the expansion of the Los Bronces copper mine in Chile in November. The fourth project in the pipeline is the giant Minas-Rio iron ore operation in Brazil, which is set to begin full production in the second half of 2013.
“The first shipment of 100,000 tonnes of Kolomela lump ore left the port of Saldanha on 19 December 2011,” Chris Griffith, CEO of Anglo American’s Kumba Iron Ore business, said.
“The commissioning of the Kolomela project is in line with our growth strategy of ramping our South African production up to 70 million tonnes per year by 2019.”
Kolomela had been expected to deliver initial production at the end of the first half of 2012.
Kumba Iron Ore owns 74 percent of the Sishen, Thabazimbi and Kolomela mines.
