Bauxite — premium trihydrate ore for alumina refining

The product

Bauxite is the ore from which alumina is refined and, from alumina, aluminium is smelted. Its value to a refinery is determined by two numbers: available alumina, which is the alumina that can actually be extracted under Bayer process conditions, and reactive silica, which consumes expensive caustic soda and generates waste.

Fatala ore is gibbsitic — trihydrate — which means it can be digested at low temperature, around 145°C, rather than the 250°C required for monohydrate boehmitic ores. Low-temperature digestion is materially cheaper in energy terms, and it is the reason West African trihydrate bauxite commands a structural preference among refiners with older, low-temperature plant.

Product is shipped crushed to 100 mm with no washing, beneficiation or drying beyond natural moisture loss on the stockpile. It is a genuinely simple product: dig it, crush it, ship it, and let the specification do the selling.

Shipped specification

Customers and contracts

Fatala ships to alumina refineries in Ireland, the United Arab Emirates, China and India. Around 74% of volume is committed under contracts of three years or longer, priced on a formula indexed to the published alumina price rather than to spot bauxite, which aligns the mine’s revenue with the economics of the refinery it feeds.

Cargoes are typically Capesize, loaded by floating crane at a transhipment anchorage on the Rio Nuñez because the river channel will not take a fully laden vessel. That transhipment step adds cost and a weather-related loading risk in the wet season, and the operation carries a stockpile policy sized to absorb it.

The aluminium demand case, honestly stated

Aluminium demand grows with vehicle lightweighting, packaging, construction and, increasingly, solar module frames and transmission conductor. Those are real and durable drivers. But bauxite is not a scarce mineral: it is one of the most abundant ore types on earth, and Guinea alone holds enough of it to supply the world for well over a century.

Value in bauxite therefore comes from three things and only three: quality of the ore body, cost of getting it to a ship, and reliability of supply. Fatala competes on all three and makes no claim to be exposed to a scarcity story that does not exist. The asset earns its place in the portfolio because it produces cash at the bottom of the cycle and will still be doing so in 2050.