interesting article from bon

Hi all

Interesting article posted on BON thread by vegepatch taken from The Age. Note BON are confident of dredgin 6+million tonnes over a 4-5 month period - one of the logistics questions Nobull is interested in. Our deposit is a bit deeper, but no enough to be an issue with the same technology, and richer.

I'm expecting UCL and BON will twin as they advance their projects.

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Phosphate sea mining simple: Bonaparte
September 5, 2008 - 5:57PM (The Age)

Diamond miner Bonaparte Diamonds Mines NL aims to be the world's first producer of marine phosphates off the African nation of Namibia and has shrugged off concerns about ocean mining.

The company began a program last month to delineate a minerals reporting code compliant phosphate resource at its Moeb project, which is expected to be complete in the fourth quarter of this year.

Demand for phosphate, which is used primarily in agricultural fertilisers, has soared, lifting the price about eightfold in the past eight months to around $US400 ($A493.52) a tonne, sending the share price of phosphate explorers higher.

Bonaparte managing director Mike Woodborne said demand for agricultural phosphate would grow, driven by an expected 42 per cent surge in world population by 2050.

"There is no substitute for phosphorous in agriculture," Mr Woodborne told the Paydirt Africa Down Under Conference in Perth.

He said Namibia's sea-based phosphate resources were known but had not been developed until now.

Bonaparte would use "standard equipment and techniques" for marine sampling, he said.

"As soon as you say underwater, people say 'how are you going to get that out?'," Mr Woodborne said.

"Well ... dredging and mining have long been associated.

"It's not uncommon to see dredges floating in ponds where alluvial deposits such as heavy minerals or tin or gold are being produced.

"The ability to stir up the slurry and process it on a dredger is commonly used in mining.

"In terms of accessing people, dredging operations around the world, led by the Dutch and the Belgians, have been moving enormous qualities of material to generate fantastic new coastal features like they have in Dubai."

He said sophisticated technology was available to access marine deposits, such as flexible pipe dredges that work down to depths of nearly 1,200 metres and can be accurate to within one metre of the target.

"We dredge it up off the sea bed, where we have - at sea - an initial phase of enrichment through a simple screening process to produce an enriched slurry.

"This is transported to the shore on what we call sister boats ... then loaded into a stockpile.

"To move about 6-7 million tonnes of material off the seabed, that could be done within a period of around 4-5 months potentially.

"Once stockpiled on shore, it looks to be a fairly simple process, with gravity (treatment) and possibly some chemical treatment."

He said the company's Namibian project was ideally situated for transporting phosphate to target markets in South America and North America, Europe and Asia.

Marine mining has been conducted by diamond giant De Beers off Namibia and South Africa for several years, while Nautilus Minerals has been seeking gold, copper and zinc in seas off Papua New Guinea.