What is the Kwale Project?
Base Titanium Limited, operates the 100% owned Kwale Mineral Sands Operations in Kenya, which commenced production in late 2013.
Kwale Operation is located 10 kilometres inland from the Kenyan coast and 50 kilometres south of Mombasa, the principal port facility for East Africa.
The Kwale Operation features a high grade ore body with a high value mineral assemblage, rich in rutile. Mining initially commenced on the Central Dune orebody before transitioning to the South Dune orebody in June 2019. The Kwale Operation currently accounts for approximately 65% of Kenya’s mining industry by mineral output value.
Kwale Operations is designed to process ore to recover three main products: rutile, ilmenite and zircon.
Base Titanium employs a hydraulic mining method which has proven cost effective and well suited to the Kwale deposit and involves blasting the mining face directly with high pressure jets of water to create an ore slurry. The ore slurry is then pumped to the wet concentrator plant where slimes are removed before a number of gravity separation steps reject most of the non-valuable, lighter gangue minerals to produce a heavy mineral concentrate. The heavy mineral concentrate is then processed in the mineral separation plant which cleans and separates the rutile, ilmenite and zircon minerals into finished products for sale.
Finished products for bulk shipment are then transported to the Company’s privately owned and operated Likoni Port Facility for export, while containerised shipments are exported through the Port of Mombasa.
Base Titanium is actively seeking to extend the life of Kwale Operations through its near mine and regional exploration programs.
