The magnetite project 90km from Albany in Western Australia is a 70:30 joint venture between Grange and SRT Australia – the latter jointly owned by Sojitz Corporation and Kobe Steel.
The JV partners have appointed PCF Capital to help it find a strategic investor for the project.
A definitive feasibility study was completed by the project owners in 2012 for the 10Mtpa concentrate option, and most regulatory and environmental approvals in place.
There is a 5Mtpa option within the constraints of the existing approvals, which is expected to bring the capital cost down from $2.9 billion for 10Mtpa to $1.4 billion.
Grange is confident the operation, designed to produce 10 million tonnes per annum of 69.5% iron magnetite concentrate, will draw a premium price in the iron pellet feed market.
However, the costs are quite high, especially when compared to the direct shipping hematite operations in the state.
In the DFS it was anticipated operating costs would $58.50 per tonne delivered at the ship’s rail in Albany, excluding royalties.
Southdown is planned to be a pit to port operation involving an open cut mine and concentrator, transmission line for power supply, desalination plant for water needs, slurry and return water pipelines to and from Albany port, and significant extensions to the Albany port.
On the mining front, a fairly vanilla drill, blast, truck, shovel operation is planned coupled to a runoff-mine stockpile.
The magnetite will be crushed and progressively ground before being magnetically separated to form a magnetite slurry.
For the 5Mtpa option the concentrator will be reduced from two lines to one. Some components will be sized to accommodate a 10Mtpa rate to allow for a production expansion down the track.
The concentrate would be transported as a slurry via a buried pipeline about 110km to a concentrate dewatering and storage facility at Albany port.
At the port the magnetite concentrate would be loaded onto 20,000t transhipment and barged out to 175,000t cape size vessels anchored in King George Sound.
