By Feizal Samath
PULMODDAI, Sri Lanka, Jul 3 2002 (IPS)

Wasantha Anurakumara has to only take a few steps on this beach along Sri Lanka’s north-east coast to come across the rich minerals that give the fine grain sand a black hue.

“This is money. We are walking on it, miles of it,” says Anurakumara, a manager at Lanka Mineral Sands Ltd., a state-run company. To make his point, he scoops a handful of black sand and watches it seep through his fingers.

Indeed, Sri Lanka has an abundance of such mineral-rich sand along this coastline. The heavy minerals that have been identified are ilmenite, rutile and zircon.

Ilmenite, a black, heavy, metallic oxide mineral, is the major source of titanium, a metal valued for its high strength and light weight. Titanium’s strength is such that it can withstand very high temperatures and is non-corrosive.

Given its high strength-to-weight ratios, titanium is deemed ideal for high-performance military aircraft and rockets, space capsule skins, armour plate, aircraft firewalls, jet engine components, landing gears, submarines, and engine parts (as an alloy).

“Titanium is regarded as the metal of the future,” says S A Nandadeva, general manager of the state-run company. “The industrial world cannot do without it and there is no substitute for it.”

Rutile, on the other hand, is mainly used in the titanium metal industry and in welding rods, while zircon is in demand in the ceramic industry for high quality glazing, foundries, and electrical items.

Yet, since 1997, there has been little attempt to mine this mineral wealth because the country’s north-east has been affected by the Tamil Tiger rebels’ separatist campaign against the Sri Lankan government.

But that is on the verge of changing, since the two parties formally signed a truce four months ago to cease fire and work toward peace. With hopes for peace high, the ships will not have to wait long to ferry these mineral exports to their main markets, Europe and Japan.

The warehouses in the sprawling company’s compound here, some 300 kilometres east of the capital Colombo, are stocked with 60,000 tonnes of ilmenite and 150,000 tonnes of crude zircon.

Most of these stocks are from minerals extracted before September 1997, when production stopped after the Tiger attack sank a cargo ship loaded with ilmenite anchored one kilometre off the beach.

Pulmoddai is considered one of the best mineral sites in the world, with a heavy mineral content of 60 to 70 percent compared to beach deposits in Australia, a big producer, where the concentration is only five percent.

This makes Lanka Mineral Sands one of the world’s low-cost mineral sand producers, with up to 70 tonnes of heavy minerals being extracted from 100 tonnes of raw sand.

Furthermore, this company is the only one of its size and nature in Sri Lanka’s east.

“This mine is supposed to be the richest in the world,” says Nandadeva. The main deposit consists of around 60 percent ilmenite, eight percent rutile and 8-10 percent zircon.

Pulmoddai does not have a sheltered anchorage and no shipments are possible during the north-east monsoon, which usually blows from October to March, when the seas can get very rough. No mining is done either.

It is during this period that sand washed ashore by heavy waves renews the beach deposits. “The conditions here are right for the sand to be washed ashore,” adds Nandadeva. “There is no erosion.”

Surveys commissioned by Lanka Mineral Sands indicate that the heavy minerals actually come from the island’s interior, after being washed down by rivers such as the Mahaweli, Sri Lanka’s longest river.

The company also sees more commercial potential in the future, if peace does come and stay. It has mined only a limited area in Pulmoddai – the first deposit was surveyed in 1971. Moreover, its activities have not run into objections by environmentalists.

New surveys, both onshore and offshore, estimate there are more than 12 million tonnes of heavy minerals in Pulmoddai and other nearby untapped areas, all on the east coast. They estimate that the reserves could last 25 to 30 years at the rate it was mined in the past.

The state-run company’s earning capacity reflects the wealth of this area: it was earning around 300 million rupees (about 3.3 million U.S. dollars) annually during its peak.

So much so that until the Tigers struck in 1997, Lanka Mineral Sands, which pays royalty to the government for the mining rights, was the most profitable venture among state companies.

Now, the Tigers, in fact, stand to gain once the 340 workers at this company get back on the production line, since it now comes under Sri Lanka’s eastern development ministry.

This means that profits from mining the rich deposits will be retained in the region that the Tamil Tiger rebels are eyeing to control.

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