Providing ocean shipping service from Guinea TOKYO - Mitsui O.S.K .Lines Ltd. (MOL; President & CEO: Junichiro Ikeda) today announced that it held a signing ceremony for a five year bauxite transport contract with Alufer Mining Limited (Alufer; Chairman: Adonis Pouroulis, CEO: Bernard Pryor. The contract was signed by Toshiaki Tanaka, MOL’s Head of Dry Cargo, and Bernard Pryor at MOL’s offices in Tokyo. Alufer has received all required permissions from the government of Guinea with regard to building the Bel Air bauxite mine and construction commenced in January 2017. The Bel Air mine is located 15km from the coast near the Cap Verga peninsula, 120km north of Guinea’s capital, Conakry and has a JORC compliant resource of over 146mt of trihydrate bauxite with low reactive silica. Alufer is building and will operate the new Cap Verga export facility which will enable the loading of Capesize vessels anchored 32km from the coast. Bauxite production is scheduled to start in the third quarter of 2018 and reach production of 5.5 million tonnes per annum. MOL's ocean shipping services will support the project. MOL continues to take a proactive stance in providing safe, reliable and efficient transport of bauxite from the Republic of Guinea and anticipates strong growth in demand for this commodity in that the current market for seaborne bauxite is approximately 100mt per annum and is forecast to grow 40% by 2025, primarily driven by import requirements in China.