CAPE TOWN (miningweekly.com) – Integrated manganese developer Kalagadi Manganese has secured a R2.2-billion ($202-million) loan from the African Development Bank for its mine, sinter plant and part of the proposed smelter complex.

African Development Bank (AfDB) group CEO Haidara Alhassane announced on Tuesday that the women-led project dovetailed well with the bank’s developmental strategy.

“This fits well with the direction we want to follow,” Alhassane said, at a media conference on the sidelines of the Investing in African Mining Indaba.

The 11-year loan at an undisclosed interest rate has a two-year grace period, he added in response to Mining Weekly Online.

Developmental funding institutions like the AfDB give longer loan tenure at favourable rates of interest, which facilitates development.

Kalagadi chairperson and co-founder Daphne Mashile-Nkosi, accompanied by Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu, said the sinter plant, which was hot commissioned on January 6, was currently producing at a rate of 2 000 t a day.

Mashile-Nkosi reported that funding was also being secured for the unfunded portion of the smelter, which is to be built within the Coega industrial development zone at the deep-water Ngqura port, near Port Elizabeth.

The smelter is designed to yield 320 000 t of high-carbon ferromanganese a year and, of the 2.4-million tons of sinter expected to be produced a year, 700 000 t is earmarked for the smelter and the rest will be exported.

Kalagadi has secured a product offtake agreement with the Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed Metmar.

President Jacob Zuma opened the Stanley Nqobizizwe Nkosi manganese sinter plant near Hotazel, in the Northern Cape, in December.

Kalagadi holds the manganese mining rights on various farms in the area.

The underground ore has manganese content of 37% to 38%, which the sinter plant will enhance to 47% and 48%.