Asian Metal News
GAL Group (Guangdong Aluminium Group or Galuminium Group) owns four bauxite deposits at Maochang Town Guizhou, with measured bauxite resource reserves of 180 mln t, capable of sustaining 30 years of mining. The company originally planned to start mining in October 2019, but have decided to postpone to early 2020 due to continued falling bauxite prices and rapidly rising market supply over the past few months. GAL Guizhou has designed bauxite mining capacity of 3 mtpy, producing bauxite at Al2O3 60~80% and A/S ratio at 9 grade.
The company’s phase I alumina project has designed capacity of 650 ktpy, consuming 1.5 mln t bauxite per annum. Once its mines come online in 2020, bauxite mined will be mainly for its own use. The refinery consumed 120 kt of bauxite in alumina refining during August, and September consumption is expected to be the same. The company’s bauxite consumption totaled 1.1 mln t in 2018, and 800 kt for the first eight months of 2019. Currently, it holds 200kt bauxite in stock.
GAL Qingzhen alumina refinery is operating at 650 ktpy (Phase I) with the remaining 650 ktpy (Phase II) scheduled to come online by end-2020. When operating at full capacity, the refinery could potentially consume 3 mln t of bauxite per annum.
At present, local bauxite prices with A/S grade at 6 stand at RMB 290/t in Guizhou, delivered without tax.
