Canadian developer Millennial Potash will focus on serving the African market through its 800,000 t/yr Banio potash project in Gabon, but given the location of the mine, the company is also targeting markets in the Americas as well as in Asia.
The project will produce primarily red granular MOP via solution mining. First production is forecast for the end of 2028 to early 2029 on the basis that all financing is secured by early 2027.
The majority of the output will be sold to African markets — a region that has shown healthy growth in recent years. Africa imported about 1mn t of MOP in 2015 — a figure that Argus forecasts will almost double by 2035. South Africa is the largest importing market on the continent with demand at about 400,000 t/yr, the majority of which is for granular product.
Africa is able to absorb all of the output, but Millennial Potash is keeping its options open to shipping its products to other markets. The project is located 50km south of the port city Mayumba but the company is also exploring options to develop a deep-sea port on the Atlantic coast which would be closer to the mining area compared with Mayumba.
Logistically, the project is well placed to ship to major markets such as Brazil and the US. It is also considering shipping to India and China but these markets are primarily standard MOP markets.
The company has strong support from the US after it secured an investment loan of up to $3mn from the US International Development Finance Corporation in July, which will support a feasibility study of the project that will begin this year.
Banio not the only game in town
Africa does not currently have any active domestic MOP production but there are several projects being developed on the continent.
Most of them are located in west Africa where projects with a combined capacity of 6mn t/yr are being developed. All of these are based in the Republic of Congo except for the Banio project:
- UK-based developer Kore Potash is developing a project with a total MOP capacity of 2.6mn t
- Kanga Potash — a subsidiary of South African-based Sarmin Mining, owned by Canadian private equity investment company Sarmin Holdings — is developing the Kanga project, which is estimated to eventually produce 600,000 t/yr of MOP
- China's Shenzhen Luyuan is developing a 2mn t/yr project in Mboukoumassi.
Millennial Potash chairman Farhad Abasov told Argus that the Banio project can be differentiated from these other projects in several ways. Firstly, by their approach as they are using solution mining rather than conventional mining methods, which involve developing "extremely complex, extremely expensive" underground operations. Secondly, Abasov believes there is less political risk in Gabon compared with the Republic of Congo.
And finally, it has a logistical advantage as the Banio project is located on the coast. A 60km brine pipeline will be constructed to bring the brine from the mining site to the processing facility, which will be at the port. "We don't need roads, we basically don't need any kind of special logistics and we definitely don't need rail to bring this to the port," Abasov said. "So that gives us a tremendous advantage, not just over our neighbours in Africa, but worldwide as most deposits happen to be in the middle of continents."
Millennial Potash's preliminary economic assessment also estimated that operating costs would amount to $61/t of granular MOP, which the company reports is significantly less than costs at other major operating potash producers.
