PDAC video: Gabon’s Millennial Potash aims to become Africa’s first potash miner, CEO says

Millennial Potash (TSXV: MLP; OTCQB: MLPNF) wants to double its initial resource at the Banio potash project in Gabon, chairman Farhad Abasov said in a video interview. The company also plans to publish a feasibility study by early next year.

“This is going to be one of the first, if not the first, potash producers in Africa,” Abasov said last month at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada’s annual event in Toronto. “We want to supply African agriculture and become a local supplier to Brazil as well.”

The company is to drill two new holes, building on a resource estimate from March 2024 of 656 million indicated tonnes grading 15.9% potassium chloride and 1.16 billion inferred tonnes at 16%. The updated drilling and environmental baseline studies will support a revised NI 43-101 report, feeding into a feasibility study by March next year, he said.

Millennial’s April 2024 preliminary economic assessment outlines a US$1.07-billion after-tax net present value at a 10% discount, a 32.6% internal rate of return and a target production rate of 800,000 tonnes a year. The company estimates US$480 million in initial capital costs and US$61 per tonne in operating costs, with a planned port and processing facility 50 km away at Mayumba on Gabon’s Atlantic coast.

Millennial’s team, which also built and sold Millennial Lithium and Allana Potash, owns 35% of the company’s shares. A Singapore-based fertilizer group holds about 26%, with institutional backers in Canada and London holding up to 20%.

Watch the full chat below with The Northern Miner’s western editor, Henry Lazenby.