Evaluating Cement Plant Opportunities in Developing Countries

Preparing a Reserve Statement for constructing the Mamba Cement Company Ltd. in Tanzania.

2014 - 2016
Tanzania
Motisun Group

Rapidly developing countries require ever-increasing amounts of basic construction materials, such as cement, to keep up with growing populations and demands for housing and infrastructure. To meet such demands, Tanzanian-based Motisun Group is planning to construct the Mamba Cement Company Ltd. (MCCL), which is an integrated cement plant on the Tarawanda area limestone deposit in Tanzania.

Construction of such a facility required the MCCL to seek additional financing from banks that require statements of mineral reserves that are compliant with the Australian Joint Ore Reserve Committee (JORC) 2012 Code for reporting exploration results, mineral resources, and ore reserves for their investment decision making; RESPEC was contracted to provide these services. Three members of the Lexington, Kentucky, office became registered members of the Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration (SME) to provide these statements under the JORC’s International Reciprocity of Competent Persons. RESPEC currently has four competent, qualified persons for reporting reserves in most countries.

The MCCL project proved to be one of the most thoroughly evaluated projects that RESPEC has performed. Beyond usual drillhole and geology modeling, cement plant raw mixes were evaluated as part of mine production scheduling; a thorough statistical analysis of the limestone deposit was conducted; traditional modeling techniques that were deemed unacceptable by the banks’ technical experts required more advanced modeling techniques; and detailed mine planning beyond normal feasibility studies was completed.

All of these tasks were completed to serve the MCCL and receive approval from their financers. Today, the project is in the final stages of approval and full production is expected to begin in the second quarter of 2017.