Competitiveness and prospects for the African mining industry

Olivier Bomsel ()

Natural Resources Forum, 1989, vol. 13, issue 4, 285-293

Abstract: Since the 1960s the Kédia mines have been the main source of iron ore for Mauritania. In the 1970s SN1M, the Mauritanian state enterprise responsible for the mining of the country's iron ore, concerned about the eventual depletion of its reserves at Kédia, and at the urging of its European customers, undertook to develop new iron‐ore deposits at the Guelbs. The deposits at the Guelbs, however, were low‐grade magnetite ore as opposed to the high‐grade hematite ore at Kedia, and were much more costly to mine and process. The cost of the Guelbs project and its failure to meet production targets have strained the resources of SNIM to a financial and technical breaking point. The paper suggests that one solution to SNIM's difficulty may be to mothball the Guelbs project and to develop instead other deposits in the vicinity of the Guelbs.

Date: 1989
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https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-8947.1989.tb00351.x

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:natres:v:13:y:1989:i:4:p:285-293

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