QIT Madagascar Minerals is a mining company located in the Fort-Dauphin

Tôlanaro

Tôlanaro or Tolagnaro is a city in Madagascar. It is the capital of Anosy Region and of Tôlanaro District. It has a port of local importance, and a new port has been built at Ehoala...

 region of southeastern Madagascar

Madagascar

The Republic of Madagascar is an island country located in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa...

. After roughly 20 years of exploration, negotiations, and preliminary work, the company began production of the titanium dioxide

Titanium dioxide

Titanium dioxide, also known as titanium oxide or titania, is the naturally occurring oxide of titanium, chemical formula . When used as a pigment, it is called titanium white, Pigment White 6, or CI 77891. Generally it comes in two different forms, rutile and anatase. It has a wide range of...

 ore, ilmenite

Ilmenite

Ilmenite is a weakly magnetic titanium-iron oxide mineral which is iron-black or steel-gray. It is a crystalline iron titanium oxide . It crystallizes in the trigonal system, and it has the same crystal structure as corundum and hematite....

. Initial capacity is projected at 750,000 tonne

Tonne

The tonne, known as the metric ton in the US , often put pleonastically as "metric tonne" to avoid confusion with ton, is a metric system unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. The tonne is not an International System of Units unit, but is accepted for use with the SI...

s per year, with future phases of development potentially expanding capacity to 2,000,000 tonnes per year. The mine is 80% owned by QIT-Fer et Titane

QIT-Fer et Titane

QIT-Fer et Titane is a Canadian mining company located in Quebec. The company operates an ilmenite mine at Lac Tio in northern Quebec, and in southern Quebec operates refining facilities that produce titanium dioxide, pig iron, steel, and other metal products...

, a wholly owned subsidiary of the mining giant Rio Tinto Group

Rio Tinto Group

The Rio Tinto Group is a diversified, British-Australian, multinational mining and resources group with headquarters in London and Melbourne. The company was founded in 1873, when a multinational consortium of investors purchased a mine complex on the Rio Tinto river, in Huelva, Spain from the...

; the remaining 20% is owned by the government of Madagascar.