bauxite versus alumina, page-17

Dino - your three posts from April are below.
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At full production we would be looking at 2.8Mt of alumina refined from 7Mt of bauxite per annum.

If we assume a 50% cost factor resulting in a net return of $275 per ton of alumina, UMC's annual nett return would be:

(2,800,000 x 275) / 4 = $192.5m

Must also take into account that UMC/Norsk Kalumburu bauxite returned grades of 39.9% available alumina and negligible silica (0.3%).

Bring on the JV.
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Dino's posts:

#1731365
It costs QAL in Gladstone $106 per tonne to refine around 4 million tonne of alumina per year. I think the price of alumina is around the $250-$300 at the moment but it was up around the $600 mark for a while. That $106 includes the purchase and shipping of the bauxite from Weipa which UMC won't have to worry about. I'm not too sure about the smelting costs though. There is one in town, but don't know anyone who works there. The father in law is getting me some more figures tonight which i'll post when I get them. These figures might not be accurate, it's just what he told me over the phone, but it's something to start with.

#1732683
Just a bit of quick research (should have those other figures tomorrow)
8.5 million tonnes of wet raw bauxite used by QAL in 2005 to produce 3.8 million tonnes of alumina. The main consumable used in the process was 900 000 tonne of caustic soda which can be recycled.
Bauxite mines in Weipa are open cut with around 1.5 metres of topsoil then 3-4 metres of bauxite (from what I read, the grades of bauxite are made up of gibbsite, boehmite and diaspore). There is a secondary product also found called calcined bauxite, which is exported to Europe and North America and used as an industrial abrasive.
Current mines are all open cut and are in Weipa (QLD), Gove (NT), and Darling Range (WA). There are references to Mitchell Plateau and Cape Bougainville up in the North but they say are not currently economically viable (until we get our gas!!!).
One piece of interesting info I also found was that it takes between 14000 - 16000 kilowatt hours of electricity to smelt one tonne of aluminium from 2 tonne of alumina.
In Autralia 2005 there was 60 million tonne of bauxite mined, 17.7 million tonne of alumina refined and 1.9 million tonne of aluminium produced.
I also heard a story around town that the smelter used around a third of the power generated by the power station which is 1680 megawatt.


#1732836
Found a good website for you to check out, bit too much info on it to post. http://www.chemlink.com.au/alumina.htm

Also:
Estimated ore reserves in Weipa is 4 billion tonne and Gove 800 million tonne (mine life till 2030).
Darling range is a low grade bauxite around 27% aluminium oxide, but has a very low reactive silica content, which means less caustic soda. In 2004 it refined 7.8 million tonne of alumina from 29 million tonne of bauxite.
Weipa deposit is around 50% aluminium oxide and less than 9% reactive silica. If the bauxite has a high percentage of this silica it's not economically viable to refine, but they are looking at ways to counter this as all of the high grade bauxite is becoming scarce.

I'm not too sure what size deposits UMC has, but I would think a few hundred million tonne would be needed to build a refinery and smelter.

The alumina refinery I was on construction with cost around $1.5 billion in 2003 (1.4 million tonne capacity per year).
A small smelter would be around the 2-3 billion dollar mark. You could nearly double the cost of these figures in 5 years time when it would be needed.