Iran eyeing Australian bauxite reserves to aid domestic aluminium capacity expansion

Iran is stepping up its initiatives to procure bauxite for its domestic aluminium industry. In a bid to boost the country's aluminium production, the Persian Gulf country is mulling options to secure bauxite supplies from Australia as its Guinea bauxite project remains held up as of now.

"We need bauxite because we don't have enough in Iran. If we want to reach our goal, we should buy bauxite," said A. Asgharzadeh, exploration manager at Iranian Mines & Mining Industries Development & Renovation (IMIDRO), a state-owned holding company active in the mining sector.

Iran has been planning significant investments in developing its own bauxite reserves and processing operations but is not coming across sufficient deposits to meet its aluminium capacity expansion target of 1.5 million tonnes by 2025. The present aluminium capacity of the country stands at 450,000 tonnes.

"If we want to reach this capacity, we need more than 4 million tonnes of bauxite per year," said Asgharzadeh on the sidelines of the IMARC mining conference in Melbourne.

IMIDRO owns a majority 51 per cent stake in Guinea's Societe des Bauxites de Dabola-Tougue (SBDT), while the latter owns permits to mine bauxite over 5,684 square kilometres area. SBDT expects to begin construction of a bauxite mine by the end of this year to unearth its bauxite reserves. The project has remained largely dormant since the signing of the original agreement between Guinea and Iran in 1992. However, the two nations renewed the agreement last year. Guinea holds the remaining 49 per cent stake in SBDT.

Asgharzadeh said, "One strategy is to extract the bauxite from Guinea, and export it to Iran. Another way is to negotiate with different companies, for example in Australia, with a big mine in the north of Australia, Queensland, owned by Rio Tinto. We want to negotiate to buy bauxite from this company or other companies."

"Another plan, we will try to find a new location for exploration and extraction of bauxite in other countries. And we'll continue our exploration in Iran, but Iran doesn't have good potential for bauxite," he added.

Rio Tinto owns the Weipa bauxite mine located on the Western Cape York Peninsula in Queensland, Australia. The mine has a production capacity of 26 million tonnes of bauxite per annum. The company could be reached at to comment on this matter.

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