Chairman of LAUGFS Holdings Limited W.K.H Wegapitiya and Managing Director of LAUGFS Holdings Limited U.K. Thilak De Silva signed on behalf of LAUGFS whilst Chief Executive Officer of SLINTEC Asela Gunawardena and Director of SLINTEC and Chairman of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Prof. Sirimali Fernando signed the agreement today 1st of March 2012.
Accordingly, the new venture would produce titanium dioxide from ilmenite obtained from mineral sands extracted from Pulmoddai.
“Venturing into this nature of agreement with a semi government owned institution to set up a processing plant in order to add value to a product which would bring many facets of opportunities not only to us but Sri Lanka as a nation. At present mineral sands are exported as a bulk commodity whereas these sands will be processed and re-imported back to Sri Lanka as a different product which is higher in value. Now we have hope that we are able to add value to the Sri Lankan mineral sands which clears the way thus removing any obstacleâ€, said Chairman of the LAUGFS Holdings W.K.H Wegapitiya.
He further said that it was during the last government budget presented before the parliament that the government allocated funds on Research and Development (R&D) on natural resources. And this joint venture is a direct outcome of that initiative under “Mahinda Chinthanayaâ€
SLINTEC at the onset started a project with the Ministry of Technology and Research and NSF as a partner to produce titanium dioxide – TiO2 and Nano TiO2 from ilmenite obtained from mineral sands of Pulmoddai. Ilmenite is a mineral formed from oxides of titanium and iron (FeO.TiO2). It is also one of the major sources of metallic Titanium. Sri Lanka is estimated to have 18 million metric tons (MT) of ilmenite reserves amounting to 9th largest in the world. The country’s north and east beach sands contained about 70 – 72% ilmenite and it is estimated to have 6 – 8 million MT of ilmenite according to the surveys of the geological survey and mines bureau (GSMB) of Sri Lanka. Pulmoddai ilmenite is known to contain about 50 – 60% of Titanium dioxide in its composition.
Titanium dioxide (TiO2) is one of the heavily used oxides. Nearly 60% of the world titanium oxide production is consumed by the paint industry. In addition to paints and coatings, printing ink, paper, rubber, textile, polyester fibre, rayon, plastic, leather, detergent, electronic, pharmaceutical, cosmetic, refractory industries use TiO2 as a raw material. Both TiO2 and nano TiO2 demand is projected to grow as above industries are growing. Especially, in the case of TiO2 the world production is struggling to keep up with the increasing demand. This has been indicated in the recent price increase (in 2011 reaching nearly $4000 per MT) and opening of several new manufacturing plants by the major titanium dioxide manufacturers around the world.
Current Sri Lanka consumption of Titanium Dioxide is around 5000 MT (at about $4000 per MT) and mineral sand exports are around 60,000 – 80,000 MT (at about $300 per MT). Even though there is a apparent export gain, the total extractable Titanium Dioxide from the exported mineral sands is around 25,000 – 40,000 MT making it a net loss in exports. For the project SLINTEC has developed a proprietary process to produce TiO2 and nano TiO2 starting with ilmenite obtained from Pulmoddai, Sri Lanka. Signing of this agreement will initiate the commissioning of a pilot plant and then a large scale commercial plant at a later stage.
Under the new joint venture LAUGFS and SLINTEC initiates the project in three phases. Accordingly LAUGFS together with SLINTEC would usher into commercial production of the titanium dioxide which is about 20 times value addition to ilmenite. Later, the two entities would simultaneously engage in setting up a state of the art processing plant which would produce nano titanium better known as NanoTiO2.
