Danakali has secured a new investment

The Australian company Danakali has received $ 50 million from Africa Finance Corporation (AFC), planning to use the investment to facilitate the development of the Colluli project (Eritrea). Last year, AFC provided $ 200 million to the company. Danakali and AFC have signed a subscribtion agreement under which AFC will own 32% of Danakali.

It is planned to create a complex for the extraction of potash salts and the production of potash fertilizers under the Colluli project. Its capacity will be 472 thousand tons of potassium sulfate per year in the initial phase of operation with the potential to reach almost 944 thousand tons. As expected, the process of its construction will take 2.5 years. The project has a possible operation period of 200 years.

The Colluli project is located within the Danakil Depression, characterized by very high air temperatures and the presence of active and dormant volcanoes. Those were the difficult geological and geographical conditions that helped to form thick buried evaporite deposits there. Two potassium-bearing horizons have been revealed. The lower one has a predominantly carnallite composition and lies at a depth of about 400 m, the upper one, being at depths from 25 to 180 m, is characterized by the dominance of sylvinite. The thickness of the lower horizon reaches 17 m, the upper one – 1.7 m, average their potassium oxide content is 17% and 12.5%, respectively.

Potassium salts are not mined in the Danakil Depression, only representatives of the local Afar tribe are engaged in trading evaporated table salt, so the practical implementation of the Colluli project can give a significant boost to the development of this region and can introduce Eritrea, one of the poorest countries in the world, into the circle of global suppliers of potash fertilizers.