The Exchange : 4 days ago
Other lucrative mining options: Tanzania’s Rare-Earths deposits
While you may never have heard of ‘Rare Earths’ minerals, you most certainly have used them. Rare earths are in most all your day to day appliances from smart phones to components of electric vehicles and most all your renewable energy equipment not to mention the military applications.
Not only is Tanzania, Africa’s fourth-biggest producer of the precious metal, the world’s only source of tanzanite, it is also home to some of the world’s largest deposits of rare-earth metals. Take for instance the Ngualla site in the southern parts of the country around Mbeya Region; this is arguably one of the world’s largest and highest grade undeveloped rare-earths sites.
The once thought useless huge weathered Bastnaesite rocks happens to hold within its crevasses some very sought after rare-earth elements including neodymium (Nd) & praseodymium (Pr).
If the periodic table is not very palatable to your taste, all you need to know is that these elements are used for a range of modern works. They have applications ranging from aesthetics to colour glass, like the cool goggles and helmets that you see bikers adorning to making the most powerful magnets all the way to health uses like curing skin cancer.
Ngualla has an estimated capacity of 214.4 million tonnes of these elements at various grades and the deposits are sufficient to support a mine life of 26 years. 1
The site is developed by an international company called Peak Resources Ltd which plans to export approximately 32,700 tonnes per annum of the rare earth concentrate from Tanzania to a refinery in the UK.
The project value is estimated at US$201M with an anticipated annual operational expenditure of US$51M.
So when President Magufuli said ‘even give them the mining sites for free…the multiplier effect is huge…this is what he means, and that is just the direct investment, we have not factored in the highlights that the president mentioned like employment and supporting and complimentary businesses within and around the mining site and processing plants.
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