The Dutch company, Boskalis Westminster, has been awarded a €125 million (US$174.2 million) contract to excavate at least three million tonnes of bauxite in an area not mined for three decades.
Boskalis Westminster will excavate the Lelydorp 1 Mine and transport the bauxite to Suriname Aluminum Company's (SURALCO) refinery at Paranam in District Para, a few miles outside the capital, Paramaribo.
SURALCO , a joint subsidiary of Alcoa Inc and Alumina Limited, said that work should begin in the first quarter of 2013.
Excavation work at Lelydorp 1 was halted 30 years ago because of high operational costs to mine the land.
Boskalis Westminster will remove approximately 20 million square metres of overlay material, to reach the bauxite mineral. In a statement, Boskalis said it expects to excavate approximately 3.8 million tons of bauxite.
Suriname is one of the world's leading producers of bauxite, the raw mineral used to manufacture aluminium. The sector accounts for a majority of the country's foreign exchange earnings.
SURALCO began operations in Suriname in 1916.
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