Description

Nigeria is blessed with abundant mineral resources, which are from time immemorial formed the backbone of the nation’s economic and industrial development aspirations. Prior to independence, the nation’s mineral raw material resources contributed immensely to the export earnings of the nation.

For over three decades, the Country has continued to depend entirely on oil for her revenue and the volatile nature of the oil market has made it imperative for us to diversify the mono-product economy through exploitation and processing of our abundant solid mineral resources.

The clamour for resource control being advocated by states with petroleum resources in their domain makes it imperative for us to develop, exploit, process and utilize our solid minerals – particularly Non-metallic Minerals as every part of this country is blessed with one or more solid mineral that could yield substantial revenue for sustainable development.

Exploitation of the Non-metallic Minerals has not attained the desired level, mainly because of the various constraints associated with their exploitation, development and processing for utilization. Many of the non-metallic minerals, which are vital to the industrial take off of the country, have been found in commercial quantities within the country.

They include limestone, dolomite, marble, kaolin, barite, diatomite, feldspar, quartz and silica sands, gypsum, phosphate rock, talc, silimanite, kyanite, phosphate, salt and bentonite.

Phosphate rock refers to a mineral assemblage that occurs naturally with an exceptionally high concentration of phosphate minerals. Phosphate usually occurs as the mineral apatite, Ca5F(PO4)3 in igneous and metamorphic rocks. It may be derived from a number of sources but the most common is the one that contains high concentration of phosphates in nodular or compact masses.

The Nigerian phosphate rock deposits are sedimentary in origin. They occur mostly in granular, nodular and vesicular forms with an average weight percent of P205 varying from 34.5 to 36.25%, which compares favourably with the phosphate at Hahotos, Togo (36.6%).

Occurrences of phosphate rock are known in Sokoto, Abia, Cross Rivers, Kogi, Ondo and Ogun States. The deposits of phosphate beds in the Sokoto embayment represent southward extension of the deposits in Niger Republic.
The deposits are found in areas within the geological feature termed the Illummeden Basin.

Phosphate fertilizer and detergents are the major user industries of phosphate rock. Metal treatment, water treatment, pulp and paper, glass and ceramics, textiles, plastics, rubber, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, petroleum production, toothpaste, paints, fuels, cells are other end-user industries of phosphate rock.

This report seeks to examine the financial viability or otherwise of establishing a phosphate rock milling plant in Nigeria.

The demand for milled phosphate is quite high in Nigeria and the raw material is also available in commercial quantity.

The production capacity of the proposed milling plant is one point five (1.5) tons per hour and the plant would operate at eighty percent (80%) of the installed capacity for three hundred (300) working days per annum for ten (10) hours per day and producing six hundred (600) tons of milled phosphate bi-monthly packed in fifty (50) kilogramm Polypropylene (PP) woven sacks with input output ratio of 1:0.95.