Chatham Rock Phosphate achieves key milestone

19 December 2012

Chatham Rock Phosphate achieves key milestone with Royal Boskalis

CRP is pleased to advise that it has agreed with Boskalis to proceed to phase two of its services contract. This phase involves the final detailed design of a system for extracting rock phosphate nodules. This phase is a commitment that is estimated to cost around €4 million and is scheduled to be completed by 30 June 2013.

Boskalis is CRP’s technical partner in its Chatham Rise rock phosphate project and is a leading global services provider operating in the dredging, maritime infrastructure and maritime services sectors. In July this year, CRP entered a contract for services with Boskalis Offshore B.V. and Boskalis took a 20% shareholding in CRP. This shareholding was, to a large extent, a prepayment for services that Boskalis was to provide, including for this new phase. It is anticipated that this new phase of the contract would involve only a modest future cash cost, if any, to CRP.

To date under the contract CRP and Boskalis have done extensive work refining the extraction system for recovering and separating phosphate nodules applying adapted and proven technologies. Key considerations have included capital and operating costs and minimising possible environmental effects.

The Chief Executive Officer of CRP, Chris Castle stated “We are very pleased with the results to date under our contract with Boskalis. The outcomes achieved so far all support the feasibility of taking our project through to production. We have enjoyed a very productive and positive working relationship with Boskalis and are thrilled at this further commitment to our project by Boskalis”.

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