Mining Weekly reported that Exarro Resources Ltd. (JSE:EXX) is thinking of retrenching employees at its AlloyStream project as efforts to revive the Letaba ferromanganese pilot plant have been unsuccessful.

As quoted in the market news:

The diversified miner outlined in a notice last week that AlloyStream used technology licensed to the Exxaro group, comprising a single-step continuous reduction process that converted manganese feedstock to ferromanganese.
The technology had been successfully demonstrated on a semicommercial scale at Letaba, which was operated in conjunction with partner Assmang, which assisted in proving the technology and mitigating the remaining risks of scalability, refractory life and access to raw materials.
In January, the performance period was completed and, after further evaluation, Assmang elected not to proceed with the project based on the AlloyStream technology.

Exxaro said:

The exit of Assmang negatively impacted on the [technology’s] roll-out strategy and the establishment of the next phase of the commercial furnace in South Africa.
Exxaro is not in the position to solely use the technology for the production of ferromanganese, owing to the lack of the required raw materials.

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