Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi Wednesday inaugurated the Egyptian Black Sand Company’s factory complex in Burullus, Kafr El-Sheikh, stressing the state’s keenness to take all precautionary measures to preserve the safety of workers in the complex.
During the inauguration, the president said that the government ensures protection of the workers in this field who work on a daily basis to avoid any negative health impact on them.
Al-Sisi pointed out that the idea of the project emerged five years ago, and that the feasibility studies took three years, noting that the topic was explored more than 80 or 90 years ago. “The opportunity existed 40 or 50 years ago, but there was no ability at the time to take the executive measures to start the project,” he said.
The president noted that he was constantly informed during the past three years of the project’s progress and that he was inquiring from the project’s organizers about the size of reserves and the global demand for black sand, to assess the feasibility of expanding the project to meet the global demand.
Addressing the private sector, the president said that the project is available to the private sector to invest in, pointing out that the feasibility studies indicate the possibility of expansion in light of the increasing global demand.
The president called on the private sector to form joint groups to establish more than one black sand complex, saying “the private sector should form groups compatible with each other, with investments ranging between EGP 20-30bn, in order to complete the project within two years.”
He stressed the need to provide the necessary data on the project to everyone who wants to work in this field.
The project is consisted of 4 main parts, starting with the artificial lake with a total surface area of 83,000 square metres and a depth of 5 metres, the Tahya Misr dredger (a Dutch-made electric dredger with a dredging rate of 2,500 tonnes/hour), the floating plant with a total area of 2,800 square metres, which extracts ore at a rate of 158 tonnes/hour, and an area to collect yellow sand and impurities that are used in the settlement and backfill works behind the site.
