Base Resources owns and operates the Kwale mineral sands mine in Kenya, which commenced production in late 2013.
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 and the North Dune in February 2023.
Kwale is designed to process ore to recover three separate products – ilmenite, rutile and zircon.
After commencing with dozer mining, Kwale mining operations now exclusively uses hydraulic mining , which has proved to be more cost effective and well suited to the Kwale deposit. Ore is received at the wet concentrator plant from the mining units via a slurry pipeline. The wet concentrator plant removes slimes and concentrates the valuable heavy minerals with a number of gravity separation steps and rejects most of the non-valuable, lighter gangue minerals.
The heavy mineral concentrate is then processed in the mineral separation plant. The mineral separation plant cleans and separates the rutile, ilmenite and zircon minerals into finished products for sale.
The products are then transported to the Company’s own Likoni Port facility, located inside Mombasa Port, for export to customers.
Following an exhaustive exploration and evaluation process seeking to further extend the life of Kwale Operations in Kenya, mining is expected to finish at the end of 2024 when Ore Reserves will be fully depleted. Kwale Operations is now planning its transition to post-mining.