The Kasiya Rutile Project is a greenfield rutile and graphite mining project located within the Lilongwe and Dowa Districts in the Central Region of the Republic of Malawi, approximately 49 km northwest of Lilongwe.
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The Project, which is planned to be developed over two stages, has showed a mineral resource estimate of 1.8 billion tonnes, containing 18 million tonnes of rutile and 24.4 million tonnes of graphite. The ore reserve of 538 Mt is spread across 30 separate pits covering an area of approximately 200 square kilometres, of which an estimated 30 square kilometres is planned to be mined during the initial 25 years.
SUMMARY
Dhamana was appointed as the lead consultant to coordinate the environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA) for the Project. The team provides support and guidance to the in-country team and specialist consultants to ensure the ESIA is compliant with Malawian legislative requirements, as well as good international industry practice and lender requirements.
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In addition, Dhamana was also part of the technical team during the development of the pre-feasibility study focussing on environmental and social aspects. A key focus during this phase was the development of a geographical information system (GIS) based environmental and social mapping solution to inform the planning around mining locations and site layout.
Utilising primary and secondary data collected during the screening studies, a spatial analysis was undertaken to determine the extent of environmental and social sensitivities within the Project area, allowing Sovereign to account for various environmental and social aspects of the project area early on in the planning stages and avoid key sensitive areas.
KEY SERVICES
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Management of environmental inputs into the Project scoping study.
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Development and submission to the Malawi Environmental Protection Agency (MEPA) of an environmental scoping report.
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Management of specialist environmental and social studies to inform the ESIA.
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Development of the ESIA report for submission to MEPA and address lender/investor requirements through compliance with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) Performance Standards.
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GIS services, including spatial data collection, manipulation, analysis and mapping.
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Input and advice around environmental and social aspects to the wider project team.
LOCATION
Malawi
YEAR
2021 - present
