El Halassa (province of Fquih Ben Salah) – HM King Mohammed VI laid, on Wednesday in the rural commune of Beni Oukil – El Halassa (Province of Fquih Ben Salah), the foundation stone to build a phosphate washing plant, worth over 3.4 billion dirhams.
The Monarch was provided with details on this project which aims at increasing the Khouribga site’s production capacity and extending to the maximum the life of tapped mines (mines of Sidi Chennane and El Halassa) by securing a return on the investment of the Phosphate Company OCP.
The El Halassa plant, considered as the world’s largest, will have two washing lines with a capacity of 1,600 tonnes/hour per unit, a floatation workshop, six grinders, dykes on 120 ha for sewage farm and recovering water, and three sedimentation tanks.
The plant, which has a production capacity of 12 million tonnes yearly, is expected to create 250 stable jobs. it is due to be operational by summer 2013.
The project is part of OCP’s industrial strategy-mines in the Ouled Abdoune basin, which involves an investment of 18 billion dirhams.
The strategy provides for opening three new mines with 20 million additional tonnes of phosphate by 2020, which raises the mining capacity to 38 million tonnes/year against 18 million now.
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