Cataby mine green lit
BY ELIZABETH FABRI MINERAL sands producer Iluka Resources’ has approved the development of its Cataby mine in WA, after securing major offtake agreements in December. Cataby, 150km north of Perth, will produce an average of 370,000 tonnes of chloride ilmenite per annum, which will be processed into 200,000tpa of premium grade synthetic rutile at Iluka’s Synthetic Rutile kiln 2 (SR2), 350km south of the project. The mine will also produce about 50,000tpa of premium grade zircon and 30,000tpa of rutile, which will be processed at Iluka’s Narngulu mineral separation plant in Geraldton. On 12 December, Iluka announced it had entered into take-or-pay offtake agreements for a minimum of 175,000t of synthetic rutile per annum (about 85 per cent of production…