The cement grade bauxite will be from Australian Bauxite Limited’s Bald Hill mine, near Campbell Town.

The company said it had worked with the customer for three months to achieve the “optimum product specifications”.

“This negotiation was longer than usual because we are trying to introduce new products to customers,” it said.

“We provided samples from a suite of possible products, all prepared at our laboratory, supervised by operations manager Nathan Towns …,” it said.

 Australian Bauxite said it had started contract negotiations for mining, processing and blending at the mine site.

It said sales of its fertiliser grade bauxite were growing.

Sales of fertiliser grade bauxite were scheduled to resume in the last week of January.

“Bauxite granules reduce dust losses and improve the spreading performance of the fertiliser,” it said.

The company said its ALCORE subsidiary was ahead of schedule and working at full pace to get its core laboratory at a research centre at Berkeley Vale, New South Wales, certified to produce aluminium fluoride samples for four designated customers early in 2019.

ALCORE has a technology designed to refine raw bauxite to produce aluminium fluoride and other “valuable co-products”.

Aluminium fluoride is used in aluminium production.

Australian Bauxite said global demand for aluminium fluoride and co-products continued to grow as aluminium smelter demand and the use of aluminium fluoride in lithium ion batteries increased.

*Original article online at https://www.theadvocate.com.au/story/5872399/australian-bauxites-next-shipment-from-bell-bay-leaving-soon/