China’s Bauxite Reserves to Increase by 500,000,000-800,000,000 Tons

MLR source indicates that China Geological Survey has listed 6 bauxite mines in the first batch of complete prospecting areas. And it is expected that new reserves of bauxite resources will increase by 500,000,000-800,000,000 tons during the “Twelfth Five Year Plan” period.

On June 10th, 2011, China’s first under-coal aluminum complete prospecting project was launched in Mianchi County of Henan. It is reported that the project will last for 2 years and cost more than RMB 67 million. It is estimated that the project will increase bauxite resource reserves by 152,000,000 tons and prolong the guarantee time limit of bauxite resource of Sanmenxia City by approximately 6 years.

Currently, China’s bauxite resource inventory is merely 50%, and bauxite resources in some areas can be extracted even less than 5 years.Along with rapid growth of domestic demand for aluminum, China needs to import a great quantity of bauxite every year from overseas markets including Indonesia and Australia, etc.It is urgent to actively prospect for mines in China. Fortunately, after years of prospecting,China has pinpointed 101 perspective bauxite zones and forecasted there is approximately 10.4 billion tons of bauxite in depth of less than 500 meters, of which bauxite reserve of each of the following provinces-- Guangxi, Shanxi,Henan and Guizhou-- is more than 1 billion ton.