CONAKRY (Reuters) - Africa-focused Sable Mining plans to invest about $5 billion and export at least 10 million tonnes of iron ore per year from its Nimba iron ore deposit in Guinea, an executive of the company said on Friday.
Aboubacar Sampil, executive director of West Africa Exploration SA, Sable's local subsidiary, told Reuters construction was expected to begin next year and production scheduled for 2015.
"In all we will invest at least $5 billion by the time we reach maximum capacity," Sampil said during a presentation of the project's pre-feasibility study in Guinea's capital Conakry.
"The pre-feasibility studies have enabled us to present the project, the next important step will be to obtain our operating licence," he said.
The London AIM-listed firm on Friday increased its resource estimate at Nimba by 12 percent to 135.5 million tonnes of JORC code-compliant mineral resource for the project.
It said the increase underpinned the potential of the project as one of the most commercially attractive undeveloped iron ore assets in West Africa.
Sable has the backing of Guinean authorities to ship ore from Nimba through the relatively low-cost Buchanan port in Liberia.
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