Resumen de Palabora: : The virtues of vermiculite
Industrial Minerals
According to Richard Knight, business manager for Palabora Europe Ltd, the company continues to benefit from growing demand for vermiculite and is maintaining and extending its South African mine site to serve this robust market. "The current status of Palabora's vermiculite operation is very good," Knight told IM. "We are expanding the deposit, as a lot of the old pit has now come to end of its life. We are unable to go any deeper due to the water table and have therefore prepared new areas for open cast mining, which are equally rich in high purity vermiculite. We will need to move 1.5m tonnes of ore to get approximately 170,000 tonnes vermiculite to our global market annually, which is more than in previous years, to cover new demand. The current mine with extensions will see us through to 2033." Supplying completely separate markets, Knight says that Palabora's vermiculite does not piggy-back off the company's copper unit and is, in fact, less constrained than the metallic offering. "The vermiculite operation is a He added that vermiculite demand has a promising outlook, largely because of the mineral's application diversity. "Palabora remains very positive regarding the short and long term; our order book is healthy and we look to improve what we currently offer customers. We sell to many end use markets, our largest being the construction market and while this sector continues to perform well, this will translate positively into vermiculite sales."
