Forex-broke Malawi will have to wait for between five and six years before it can start reaping from the multi-billion-dollar Kasiya rutile and graphite project.
Officials from Australian mining firm Sovereign Metals disclosed this when they appeared before members of the Parliamentary Committee on Industry, Trade and Tourism.
Recently, Sovereign Metals predicted that an annual revenue of up to $645 million (about K1.13 trillion) would be generated from mineral exports from the rutile mine over a period of 25 years.
Sovereign Metals Social Manager Garth Lapperman told committee members that there were some things they, as a company, could control while others were beyond their control.
Early this month, Sovereign Metals announced results of an Optimised Pre-feasibility Study (OPFS) for the Kasiya Rutile-Graphite Project undertaken following a strategic investment by Rio Tinto Mining and Exploration Limited (Rio Tinto) in 2023, which established a joint technical committee to advance the development of Kasiya.
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The OPFS reconfirmed Kasiya as a leading global future supplier of strategic critical minerals outside of China.
The OPFS proposes a large-scale, long-life operation to deliver substantial volumes of natural rutile and graphite while generating significant returns.
According to Lapperman, Sovereign Metals is now commencing a Definitive Feasibly Study which will take them to the end of October this year, after which there would be a period of seeking investment and final investment decision, which may take between six and 12 months.
“I would say, to get to the point where we start construction, optimistically we are looking at a year to 24 months and a two-to-three-year construction phase. When you add all that, [that is] five to six years until the project is in operation. Projects of this scale, realistically, take that duration of time to get off the ground. The government is supportive. We are doing everything we can and applying a huge amount of resources to make sure that we can expedite the project in as quick as possible time.
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“The investors are interested. So, I think all the ingredients are there to do this expeditiously. We obviously also have to be realistic around the scale of the project and how long it can take. So, we have to exercise caution when making statements on how long things can take,” Lapperman said.
But members of the committee asked the officials on whether the time could be trimmed further, saying the project was important to the local economy.
The lawmakers also asked Sovereign Metals to shed light on whether Malawi would be exporting raw rutile as well as on the possibility of setting up a value addition plant in Malawi.
The lawmakers also wanted to know how shareholding in the mining project would be structured, a thing the officials said they were yet to agree on with the authorities as they were yet to start Mining Development Agreement talks with authorities.
Parliamentary Committee on Industry, Trade and Tourism Chairperson Paul Nkhoma said the committee was committed to ensuring that the Kasiya project took off the ground in no time.
According to Nkhoma, the committee would help the firm to ensure that the project is expedited.
The mine is expected to run over an initial 25-year life span, with potential to extend to 75 years based on deposit estimates.
At $645 million revenue per annum, Kasiya rutile and graphite mine would become a major global titanium source and the country’s largest foreign exchange earner.
Currently, Malawi is in the middle of one of the worst forex crisis, which has resulted in Lilongwe struggling to pay for essential commodities such as fuel, resulting in snaking queues at gas stations.
