Nimba Iron Ore Project - SMFG is located in the Guinean Nimba Mountains, in south-eastern Guinea, adjacent to the Liberian and Ivoirian borders. It involves mining high-grade haematite from two open pits at high elevations in a mining concession of 6.25 square kilometres, at the northern end of the mountain range. The ore is extremely high-grade and friable with almost no impurities (e.g. silica, phosphorus, aluminium oxides), little to no overburden covering the ore, and minimal waste-rock throughout the life of the mine. No tailings dam is required.
The project seeks to mine approximately 450 million tonnes of ore across 15-25 years, depending on the rate of production. The ore needs no treatment other than simple dry-crushing and screening. Processing of the ore requires no wet-processing or treatment with chemicals. There would be no tailings dam and very little waste-rock.
The Nimba Mountains emerge abruptly from lowlands, with extreme slopes, rising over 1,200m.
The weather fluctuates across the year between intense rainfall and storms, and heat and drought.
The Nimba Mountains harbour an extraordinary diversity of species and ecosystems.
These conditions and the mountains’ extreme topography and age have led to the evolution of an extraordinary diversity of fauna, flora and ecosystems. These conditions present major challenges for SMFG as it designs and engineers the Project to this unique context. SMFG has adopted the unusual approach, for a mining project, where design starts by considering the constraints first, and then designs the project within them.
The direct footprint of the planned project will cover only 20-25% of the 15.17 km² reserved for the Mining Project, which in turn is only a small fraction of the overall mountain range.
SMFG has had a significant presence at the Nimba Mountains since 2005. Choose one of the following topics for further information on the Nimba Iron Ore Project.