Tycoon Lucio Tan with Vinc Vita Mining CEO Miguelita Terrado And it's officer's Corporate Sec. Mr. Michael Manago with the rest of Lucio Tan's Management Team.
TKC Steel Corporation, the only publicly listed steel company in the Philippines, announced that it will be exporting beneficiated iron ore as a supplemental strategy to its overall business program.
According to TKC President, Anthony S. Dizon, the company is installing an iron ore beneficiating plant in Mindanao, which incidentally is the first in the Philippines, utilizing a proprietary technology that has been confirmed to be capable of beneficiating laterite ore. This entails the extraction of other minerals which will result into upgrading the iron content to over 60 percent, the average benchmark for iron ore in the international market. This technology has been proven effective and has had extensive testing in Europe and China. Upon commissioning of the beneficiating line in October 2008, TKC will process and export iron ore initially at 20,000 metric tons per month, and plans to gradually increase production capacity depending on the sustainability of ore supply from business partners Vinc Vita Mining, Surigao Integrated Resources, Oriental Vision Mining
Philippines and Nihao Mining who have committed to supply TKC an aggregate quantity of 10 million metric tons per year of laterite ore to support a large-scale beneficiation activity. If proven successful, TKC will embark on a 4 million metric tons per year capacity iron ore beneficiation project with potential expansion to 8 million metric tons per year.
According to Dizon, the company is also evaluating initial samples of magnetite ore taken from the exploration activities of its affiliate, Responsible Mineral Development, Inc. in Luzon. Dizon emphasized that the activity will be pursued alongside its major project, the blast furnace steelmaking facility in Iligan City which is scheduled for commissioning by end-2008, which will require about 600,000 MT of iron ore inputs upon full operation.
