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Development of the 44.5 million tonne Abu Dabbab and 98million tonne Nuweibi tantalum-tin projects plus exploration for gold, copper, nickel in Egypt abd Eritrea.
Message: Ian Gandel becomes chairman at Gippsland
Monday 6 July 2009 Ian Gandel becomes chairman at Gippsland LONDON (Metal-Pages) 06-Jul-09. Australian investor Ian Gandel, whose vehicle Abbotsleigh Pty recently helped to finance prospective tantalum miner Gippsland Limited, has been appointed Non-Executive Chairman of Gippsland, shortly after joining the company's board
.
The Australian company is advancing the 44.5 million tonne Abu Dabbab tin and tantalum project in Egypt which promises to be the world's next major source of tantalum, with the operation set to benefit from sales of by-product industrial mineral feldspar. Gippsland owns 50% of the joint venture with Egyptian government which operates the project. "Gippsland Limited has reached the stage where it has become logical to split my dual role of Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer in order to spread the considerable workload involved in the development of the company's world scale Abu Dabbab tantalum-tin-feldspar project," CEO Jack Telford said in an e-mailed note. "Ian will undoubtedly be a great contributor to the development of Abu Dabbab and the Company in general as his involvement will provide the Gippsland Board with increased commercial strength. In a statement Mr Gandel thanked Mr Telford for his considerable efforts in bringing the project to its present advanced stage of development. "Our company Gippsland, has a world scale tantalum resource in Egypt and capable management teams in Australia and in Egypt with a focus on bringing the project to market," he commented, adding: "The global financial crisis has impacted consumer markets, and this has in turn put pressure on the price of commodities. How long this will continue no-one knows, but in the case of the metal tantalum I see opportunity as users deplete existing stockpiles and several existing non-conflict competitor operations have closed." Abu Dabbab project has the capacity to produce 650,000 pounds of tantalum pentoxide and 1,530 tonnes of LME grade tin metal per year, over a likely mine life of 20 years, as well as generating 1.5 million tpy of premium grade feldspar from tailings, giving it an additional revenue stream.
Moving away from blood minerals
"As a source of non-conflict tantalum, Gippsland is well placed to fill a looming supply shortfall," Mr Gandel noted. "One
major supplier, Cabot Corporation, has already released a policy statement that it will not acquire any material containing
tantalum from the Republic of Congo; Democratic Republic of Congo; Republic of Zambia; Republic of Burundi or the
Republic of Rwanda." The Democratic Republic of Congo is estimated to contain more than 60% of the world's tantalum
reserves, and the hunt for the valuable electronic metal both prompted "resource wars" in the central African state over the
past decade and has been used to finance weapons for some of the most violent armed groups in the world.
Apart from Cabot, German processor H.C. Starck also stated last year that it decided not to source its raw material from the
DRC, and commodity trading firm Traxys also pledged this year not to source material from the war-torn region. Both firms
had been named in last year's report by a UN-panel of experts as having been involved in trading minerals from conflict
zones in northeastern Congo. Abu Dabbab is due to become HC Starck's
next major source
of raw material following the
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