QIT Madagascar Minerals S.A. (QMM) is a JV ilmenite mining project. It consists of three deposits that will be mined sequentially (Mandena, Ste Luce and Petriky). The Mandena, Petriky and Sainte Luce heavy mineral sand deposits are located in the Fort-Dauphin region on the south-eastern tip of Madagascar.

The Fort-Dauphin beach sand placer is located in Flandrian Dunes surrounded by the Vohimena Mountains and the Indian Ocean in South-East of Madagascar Island. The placer contributes 2/3 of the total heavy mineral resources of this country.

In the studied region there are igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary formations. The igneous formation occupies majority part of the Fort-Dauphin region and consists of the Vohimena and the Anosyenne Mountains granitic complexes. The essential compositions of the granitic complex are charnockite and garnet - biotite granite with few dozen meter of lenses containing apatite-biotite, zircon and large crystal of monazite. The Anosyenne granite is composed of ilmenite, monazite and magnetite (Andriamanantena, 2008). The coastal sedimentary formation consists of heavy minerals transported from eroded Anosyenne granite. Due to the potassium feldspar alteration, greenish yellow color is observed along the formation (Lacroix, 1922). The metamorphic formation in this area is characterized by the banded gneiss with biotite, cordierite, spinel, sillimanite, garnet, orthoclase and plagioclase (Bazot, 1974). The placer is very rich in titanium mineral accompanied with minerals bearing natural radioactive and heavy elements.

The major minerals of the deposit are monazite, zircon, quartz, garnet, spinel, sillimanite as non-refractory minerals; ilmenite, anatase, rutile, titanite, leucoxene, pseudorutile and as a refractory one. The average concentration of the ilmenite, monazite, zircon and other minerals is 66.72%, 2.3%, 2.8%, and 28.18% respectively. Ilmenite contains 63 wt.% of TiO2, Zircon - 44 wt.% of ZrO2, Monazite contains 53 wt.% of oxide rare earth elements (REE) and up to 2 wt.% of UO2 and 9 wt.% of ThO2.

QMM’s operations comprise three sites to be mined sequentially (Mandena, Ste Luce, and Petriky) Mining at the first site, Mandena, commenced in 2009.

Currently, mining is only occurring in the 2,000 hectare Mandena concession about 5km northeast of Tolagnaro (Fort Dauphin). Production on this site will eventually reach 750,000 tonnes a year. Later phases will be at Ste-Luce and Petriky and there is potential to expand production to 2.2m tonnes a year.

Ilmenite contains titanium dioxide, used principally as a raw material in the manufacture of white pigment. It is mined using a dredge situated on artificial ponds that move across the ore body as mining progresses. A 95 per cent of the material mined by the dredge is returned to the environment.

The mining process uses mechanical, magnetic and electrostatic methods of separating ilmenite from the sands – no chemical agents are utilized.

Concentrated heavy sand from the first stage is trucked to the mineral separation plant in Mandena for the final separation stages before shipping to Rio Tinto Fer et Titane’s (RTFT) plant at Sorel-Tracy, Quebec, Canada, where it is transformed into a 90 per cent titanium dioxide chloride slag. The reduction the Sorel Plant has nine smelting furnaces where ore is transformed into titaniferous slags and iron.

QMM's titania-rich slag is further acid-leached under a highpressure and moderate-temperature hydrometallurgical process to yield an upgraded titania slag with 94.5 mass percent TiO2, which is used in the chloride process.

Rio Tinto Fer et Titane (RTFT) uses a process to reduce the SiO2, MgO and CaO contents of the standard Sorel slag for the production of upgraded slag (UGS). In order to achieve such enhanc ........