39. The largest mining project in Madagascar is the Ambatovy mine, which is operatedby Sherritt International Corporation, a Canadian company, and owned by a consortium ofSherritt (40 per cent), Sumitomo Corporation (32.5 per cent), and Korea ResourcesCorporation (27.5 per cent). The operation extracts red earth from an open pit mine 24kilometres from Moramanga and conveys it as slurry through a 220-kilometre undergroundpipeline to a processing plant near the port of Toamasina on the eastern coast. There, nickeland cobalt are refined and shipped to the global market. Ambatovy is the largest foreigninvestment in Madagascar, with a total cost of about 8 billion dollars. It employsapproximately 7,500 people in the country, over 90 per cent of whom are Malagasy. In2013, refined nickel became Madagascar’s top export product, bringing in about 1 billiondollars annually in foreign currency.40. The footprint of the mine is 1,600 hectares, in an environmentally sensitive area.
39. The largest mining project in Madagascar is the Ambatovy mine, which is operated by Sherritt International Corporation, a Canadian company, and owned by a consortium of Sherritt (40 per cent), Sumitomo Corporation (32.5 per cent), and Korea Resources Corporation (27.5 per cent). The operation extracts red earth from an open pit mine 24 kilometres from Moramanga and conveys it as slurry through a 220-kilometre underground pipeline to a processing plant near the port of Toamasina on the eastern coast. There, nickel and cobalt are refined and shipped to the global market. Ambatovy is the largest foreign investment in Madagascar, with a total cost of about 8 billion dollars. It employs approximately 7,500 people in the country, over 90 per cent of whom are Malagasy. In 2013, refined nickel became Madagascar’s top export product, bringing in about 1 billion dollars annually in foreign currency.