Austral Coke and Projects Ltd said that its sub subsidiary Astra Energy Ltd SARL has acquired 16 mining licenses in Guinea in West Africa.

Austral Coke in a statement said that Astra Energy has acquired 1,263,000 acres of land for mining iron ore, bauxite and manganese. It added that the contract term is for 30 years with an expandable term of another 30 years.

Initially, the company plans to extract 5 million tonnes of Bauxite and Iron ore and 0.1 million tonnes of Manganese from these mines. Also, the company plans to mine coking coal in 6 licensed areas of Mozambique which is expected to have reserves of 300 million tonnes.

Austral hopes to start mining from 2010.

(Sourced from Reuters)