Largest single piece of equipment for GAC project arrives in Guinea

Stacker reclaimer weighs 1,300 tonnes and will now be installed at Kamsar

Arrival is an important milestone in the project, which is the largest greenfield investment in Guinea in four decades

Guinea Alumina Corporation (GAC), which is developing a bauxite mine in Boké province in the largest greenfield investment in the Republic of Guinea in the last four decades, today announced a major milestone as the biggest single piece of equipment for the project arrived in Guinea.

GAC’s stacker reclaimer weighs 1,300 tonnes and will now be installed at the company’s site in Kamsar.

When GAC’s mine is operational, the stacker reclaimer will be used to stack bauxite ore arriving at Kamsar by rail. It will also reclaim and place ore on a conveyor system for transport along GAC’s pier to waiting barges.

GAC has already completed the infrastructure on which the stacker reclaimer will be installed. This consists of a concrete structure that incorporates special rails, which the stacker reclaimer will move along as it stacks and reclaims ore.

The bauxite that is stacked and recovered by the stacker reclaimer will be unloaded from GAC’s rail wagons using another large piece of equipment, the car dumper. This equipment arrived in Guinea in June.

The stacker reclaimer was delivered to Kamsar port from China in 12 separate modules. Each part will now be carefully moved to GAC’s site, in a process that is expected to take several days.

Once assembled the stacker reclaimer, which resembles a large crane, will be some 125 long and 25 meters high.

Paulo Castellari, GAC’s Chief Executive Officer, said: “The arrival of our stacker reclaimer is another big step forward in the GAC project, bringing us ever closer to producing and exporting our first bauxite ore. This giant piece of equipment represents our commitment to delivering the safest possible approach in everything we do, by using the right kind of equipment to guarantee safety of our employees and the quality of the environment. It will work over the decades ahead as a crucial part of our production system transforming bauxite into value for Guinea and for GAC.”

GAC’s mining project in the Boké region is expected to begin exporting bauxite ore during the second half of 2019.

More than 3,000 people, over 80 per cent Guineans, are currently building GAC’s project. The project has a total budgeted project cost of some $1.4 billion.

Once full ramp up is achieved, the project is expected to produce some 12 million tonnes of bauxite per year.