TANTALUM Australia has signed an exclusive contract with an African mining and marketing company to take delivery of a minimum of about 150 tonnes of tantalum pentoxide a year.
This material will be upgraded at TA’s mineral dressing plant at Balcatta and delivered into existing customer contracts.
Shipment of the first container is expected to commence in early June.
On the sales front, another Western Australian tantalum producer Gippsland Limited has announced that it has entered into a heads of agreement with one of the top eight tantalum pentoxide concentrate buyers in the world.
The buyer has asked for its name to be kept confidential and also for the price to not be released, although the Gippsland’s announcement states that the parties have agreed on a US dollar price for the delivery of about 145 tonnes of tantalum pentoxide a year over four years between 2006 and 2009.
This latest deal adds to Gippsland’s other heads of agreement, also to another top eight buyer.