Danakali continues to be working and making progress on the Tier-1 Colluli Potash project in Eritrea that is 100% owned by the Colluli Mining Share Company (CMSC), which is a 50:50 Joint Venture between Danakali Limited and the Eritrean National Mining Company (ENAMCO). The Colluli potash project is expected to become one of the world’s most significant and lowest cost potassium sulphate production centers. The latest phase of the development included a reduction of the recovery pond area for the project. The recovery ponds are a key sub-set of the processing plant configuration, which make possible higher potassium yields by capturing and evaporating waste brines that are leaving the processing plant.
Paul Donaldson, Danakali’s CEO, commented that “we are very pleased with the positive outcomes of the optimization work on the recovery ponds and expect that there will be flow on benefits to the construction earthworks. The Colluli DFS demonstrated evaporation pond sizes significantly smaller than SOP brine projects as a direct consequence of the potassium salts being extracted from the resource in solid form,” and also stressed that “this benefit was unique to the Colluli resource.”
Other latest improvements include increasing of the processing plant’s throughput to 472,000 tons yearly from 425,000 tons. Since operations started at Colluli in 2010, the resource has been confirmed to hold more than 1 billion tons of potassium bearing salts suitable for the production of potash. The potassium bearing salts at the resource have the unique capability of creating a wide range of potash types including muriate of potash (MOP or potassium chloride), sulphate of potash (SOP or potassium sulphate), and sulphate of potash magnesia (SOP-M or potassium magnesium sulphate).
