CAY breaks ground on Inland Rail Facility and upgrade of haul roads
Our 2025 Wise-Owl Pick of the Year Canyon Resources (ASX: CAY) just broke ground on major infrastructure for its giant bauxite project in Cameroon.
CAY owns one of the world’s biggest undeveloped bauxite deposits.
CAY’s project has an estimated 1 billion tonne JORC resource with an ore reserve of 109Mt in Cameroon, Africa.
CAY aims to be producing bauxite in Q1-2026 with first shipments to customers in the first half of next year.
Today, CAY started construction works on two of the biggest infrastructure pieces for its project:
1. Building from scratch the project’s In-land Raily Facility (IRF) - the IRF is important because its the link between the trucks loading the bauxite at the mine site and the trains transporting them to the port for exporting to customers.
AND
2. Upgrading the haul roads CAY will be using to transport its bauxite - The haul roads being up to standard is also important because well built haul roads mean CAY can load heavier trucks with bauxite at the mine site. Heavier trucks = higher output from the project…
The majority of CAY’s resource is considered “free-dig” material (the resource starts from the surface and is down to ~15m of depth)...
Meaning it is not very difficult to get the bauxite out of the ground.
Like all bulk commodity mining projects, a big part of determining profitability is transport and logistics... i.e. getting the bauxite to the market.
Which is why we think today’s news is material for CAY and why there was a big cutting ceremony to celebrate works starting:
We also noticed two other important updates in today’s announcement.
First CAY said that “Engineering work for rail and port infrastructure” would start soon now that locomotives have been ordered for the project.
Basically, CAY knows the type of trucks and trains it will be using so it can now start building the infrastructure to those specs…
Second, the announcement said CAY had “secured rail access from Makor to the Port of Douala, and 65,000 m2 of land for the storage and loading of bauxite at the port”.
Both of which would allow for CAY to initially store up to 6mtpa of bauxite (more than the 2022 feasibility study had planned) and then eventually scale up to 10mtpa…
Given today’s news, we are looking forward to CAY updating its feasibility study with all of the final costings & logistical capacity upgrades the company would be able to predict more accurately.
What’s next for CAY?
CAY’s team has delivered their progress on schedule so far. Here are the upcoming catalysts that we want to see now:
🔲 Publish an upgraded JORC mineral resource estimate.
CAY already has the 8th largest bauxite resource in the world. CAY expects to upgrade its mineral resource estimate by the end of this month. CAY will likely also release drilling results as well.
🔲 Finalise offtake discussions
🔲 Finalise DFS
The bauxite price has significantly increased since the company completed its DFS in 2022. We are hoping to see some new project economics with an updated bauxite price and upgraded JORC resource.
🔲 Production to begin and first bauxite shipments
CAY expects to be producing in Q1-2026 and making its first bauxite shipments in H1-2026.
