Can you introduce Mineral Technologies to our international audience?

Mineral Technologies, a company with over 80 years of history, is owned by the ASX-listed Downer Group. We started in Australia, focusing on the extraction of industrial minerals like zircon and ilmenite from beach sands on the country's east coast, and have since expanded globally. Our expertise lies in gravity separation, magnetic separation, and electrostatic separation—processes that rely purely on physical properties, unlike chemical ones. Our equipment and technologies are tailored to minerals of sand-sized particles, typically less than 1 mm. Unlike gold or other hard-rock deposits, industrial minerals are extracted from historical beaches or dunes, often referred to as island strands, where titanium-bearing minerals like ilmenite, zircon, or rutile typically make up 1-2% of the sand. These minerals have been washed down into the sea over millions of years and then deposited back onto beaches.

Could you provide an overview of your current footprint in Africa?

We began expanding our focus from Australia to Africa in the early 1980s, starting with two major mineral sands miners off South Africa's coast: Namakwa Sands, now owned by Tronox, and Richards Bay Minerals (RBM) on South Africa's east coast, currently owned by Rio Tinto. Mineral Technologies supplied nearly all of the separation equipment, from spirals to magnetic separators, for both mines. After entering the African market, we established an office in Richards Bay. Although our work was limited during the apartheid era and the period following it, we continued to supply equipment for every new mineral sands mine across the continent, including projects in Madagascar, Kenya and Mozambique. In 2016, we upgraded our Richards Bay facility from an assembly center, where spirals were shipped from Australia for assembly, to a fully operational factory producing WHIMs locally. We also opened a spiral factory in Vereeniging. This localization significantly reduced lead times, as shipping from Australia to Africa alone used to take 8-10 weeks. While Australia historically generated the bulk of our revenue, Africa now represents our largest pipeline, outpacing other regions like North America, South America and Asia.

What is in the pipeline in terms of future growth opportunities in Africa?

Several significant projects are on the horizon. One major development is Energy Fuels’ Toliara project on Madagascar's west coast, poised to become the country’s second-largest mineral sands mine after Rio Tinto’s QIT Madagascar Minerals (QMM). Toliara is set for execution within the next two years. We also recently completed a large project in Egypt, building the country’s first modernized mineral processing plant for heavy minerals. We see more opportunities emerging in this underutilized market. In South Africa, there are large projects that  have been on hold for some time, but which could be brought into production in the near future. Our decision to localize manufacturing in Africa and strengthen our business development team has been critical to driving our growth on the continent. Long-standing relationships with key clients also help us secure repeat business and maintain momentum.

Are there applications for your technologies in other mineral sectors you haven’t traditionally covered?

Our technologies are applicable to a wide range of commodities. Two key sectors in Africa are chromite and iron ore, both critical for steel production. Chromite, primarily found in Southern Africa—mainly South Africa and Zimbabwe—has seen a significant uptick and is performing very well. Iron ore has a long history in Western Australia, where miners traditionally extracted high-grade ore, shipped it unprocessed, often to China, for steel production. However, direct ore shipments are now discouraged, given the pressure to decarbonize the steel industry, both by reducing reliance on coal and minimizing high-volume shipments over long distances. As a result, there is increasing emphasis on processing iron ore to upgrade its quality, allowing for steel production with a lower carbon footprint. Our equipment is ideally suited for this. We are closely following several large iron ore projects in Africa, such as Marampa in Sierra Leone, Simandou in Guinea, or Belinga and Baniaka in Gabon.

Do you have a final message for our readers?

We firmly believe in our slogan – Your minerals matter, but how you extract them matters more – that perfectly encapsulates our values: At Mineral Technologies, we hate seeing valuable product wasted, so we make it a core value to make the most out of every resource in an ethical, sustainable, clean, and efficient way. We remain focused on improving our technologies to maximize results.