Combined with an earlier 100,000-pound-a-year offtake agreement signed in February with an Asian consortium, the latest signing accounts for 100 per cent of initial forecast production of tantalum pentoxide from the concession. Tantalum Egypt also plans to extract, refine and export tin and feldspar at Abu Dabbab over a 30-year period, and a third agreement was signed in late 2003 with a European offtaker for some 530,000 tonnes a year of ceramic-grade feldspar.

A full feasibility study for the project is being conducted by Australian engineering consultants Lycopodium. At 48 million tonnes, the Abu Dabbab tantalumore reserves are the fourth largest in the world - the largest known deposit is located on the other side of the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia and is being developed by UK-based Tertiary Minerals(MEED 2:5:03; 18:4:03).

The Abu Dabbab deposit was originally discovered in the 1970s by a joint Egyptian-Soviet geological survey, but it is only in the last decade that it has become a viable commercial concern due to the use of tantalum in high-tech electronics and aviation equipment.