Cadence Minerals (CM) will jointly develop the Amapá iron ore project in Brazil with China's Sinoma International Engineering, Kallanish learns from the UK-based company. The partnership will be carried out through a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between its joint venture company Pedra and Branca Alliance and DEV Mineração, and Sinoma’s subsidiary Tianjin Cement Industry Design & Research Institute (TCIDR).

Under the agreement, TCIDR will provide a final proposal to complete the Definitive Feasibility Study and will submit a fixed-price engineering procurement and construction contract for the project. These and any other services provided by the Chinese company are subject to commercial evaluation and approval. TCIDR will be appointed as the contractor for the Amapá Project once these approvals have been granted and funding is secured.

The Chinese company is currently negotiating with SinoSure China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation and China Development Bank for insurance and debt financing for the construction and development of the Amapá project.

"From a strategic point, the MoU with TCIDR represents a potential one-stop-shop solution, coupling our requirements for final project funding with engineering, construction and technical expertise. Following this, our next steps will be the completion of the remaining optimisation studies followed by the Definitive Feasibility Study," observes Cadence executive director Kiran Morzaria.

Cadence’s total investment in the Amapá project to the end of September reached $12.1 million. As a result, the UK firm's equity stake has increased to 32.6%. The remaining 67.4% share in the joint venture Pedra Branca Alliance, which owns 100% of DEV Mineração, is held by Singapore-based commodities group Indo Sino.

The Amapá Project is a large-scale iron ore mine with a beneficiation plant, 194km railway and own port. Planned production, at full capacity, should reach 5.7 million wet metric tonnes/year of iron ore, of which 4.7mt would have 65.4% Fe content.

The mine was developed by MMX in 2007 and operated by Anglo American between 2008-2012. In December 2012, the Amapá project was acquired by Zamin Ferrous before being declared under judicial protection in August 2015. During the mine’s last full year of production in 2014, iron ore output reached 4.1mt, while sales amounted to 1.8mt.