Tag Archives: iron

thyssenkrupp helps keep BHP South Flank iron project on track

Bulk handling, Mineral project development, Mining equipment, Mining services, Steel and iron ore, , , , , , ,

thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions (Australia) says it is on track to deliver the world’s largest rail-mounted stackers and reclaimer on schedule for BHP’s South Flank iron ore project, in the Pilbara of Western Australia.

The company was, in November 2018, awarded the contract to design, supply, construct and commission two stackers that will deposit iron ore into stockyards for loading, and a reclaimer for loading the ore into trains for transport to Port Hedland.

These large machines will each have a capacity of 20,000 t/h, making them the largest rail mounted stackers and reclaimer in the world.

thyssenkrupp developed the two fully autonomous stackers and reclaimer with the latest statutory requirements for functional safety as defined in AS4024 and AS61508. For machine collision avoidance, a combination of GPS, SIL-rated encoders and limits are used. The fully autonomous machines are digitally connected and monitored from a remote centralised control room, according to thyssenkrupp.

Offsite pre-assembly of these locally designed and manufactured machines is well underway in Perth, according to the company, with many of the large pre-assembled modules already complete. These modules are to be transported from their current location at the AMC complex in Henderson, to the BHP South Flank site with construction likely to commence in late January 2020. The first machine will be commissioned and ready for first ore in line with BHP’s 2021 target.

Zoran Matijevic, Project Director – South Flank Project at thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions (Australia), said: “It has been a great privilege to lead thyssenkrupp’s team through design, procurement, fabrication and preassembly phases so far, and achieve 50% overall project progress milestone ahead of the plan. I look forward to logistics, construction and commissioning phases and final handover of this equipment.”

thyssenkrupp’s Industrial Solutions global Business Unit (BU) Mining has recently streamlined its operations and are now fully focusing on mining equipment, with the engineering centre of excellence for materials handling located in Perth.

TNG signs up Genesee & Wyoming Australia for Mount Peake freight job

Energy minerals, Mineral project development, Mining services, Steel and iron ore, , , , , , , , , , ,

TNG Ltd says it has entered into a binding heads of agreement (HoA) with Genesee & Wyoming Australia (GWA), the third-largest rail operator in Australia, for the provision of rail haulage services for its flagship, 100%-owned Mount Peake vanadium-titanium-iron project, in the Northern Territory.

Genesee & Wyoming is a global railroad owner and operator with extensive experience in the transport of bulk commodities for the resources industry, and is the majority owner of the rail line to Darwin that runs approximately 1,100 km from the Mount Peake mine site, according to TNG.

Rail haulage will underpin the logistics chain transporting the magnetite concentrate to be produced by the proposed beneficiation plant at the Mount Peake mine site to the proposed TIVAN® processing facility in Darwin, where TNG intends to produce high-purity vanadium pentoxide, titanium pigment and iron ore fines.

The scope of services includes the loading of magnetite concentrate onto rail at the Adnera rail siding (proposed to be located 85 km from the mine site), rail haulage from Adnera to the TIVAN facility, in Darwin, on the Tarcoola-to-Darwin rail line, and the unloading of magnetite concentrate at the TIVAN facility.

GWA will also load and transport TNG’s final products from the TIVAN facility to the Darwin Port, providing all necessary rail transport plant and equipment, including locomotives, wagons, crew vans and fuelling equipment.

“Following execution of the HoA, TNG and GWA will work together on an exclusive basis, and commit the necessary resources, to develop an optimised rail haulage strategy for Mount Peake, and negotiate and finalise a rail haulage agreement,” TNG said.

TNG’s Managing Director and CEO, Paul Burton, said: “GWA’s presence and expertise in logistics and transportation further strengthens TNG’s global network of high-quality partners assigned for the development and operation of Mount Peake.” This includes the likes of McMahon Services and SMS Group.

An updated definitive feasibility study on Mount Peake from 2017 envisaged pre-production capex of A$853 million ($617 million) for a 3 Mt/y project ramping up to 6 Mt/y in year five. This would see 24.3 Mt of magnetic concentrate turned into 10.6 Mt iron oxide and 243,000 t of vanadium oxide.

Cleveland-Cliffs nears Northshore Mining expansion milestone

Mine operation news, Mineral processing, Mineral project development, Mining equipment, Mining project news, Steel and iron ore, , , , , ,

Cleveland-Cliffs says it will host a ribbon cutting ceremony for the expansion at its Northshore Mining subsidiary, in Silver Bay, Minnesota, US, on August 7, as the $100 million upgrade nears completion.

The company will be celebrating the startup of the new production equipment, including supporting infrastructure, which will be completed on schedule and within the total investment budget of $100 million, it said. Cleveland-Cliffs invested in upgrading the concentrator building, a new scavenger building, new conveyor systems, a limestone tank and a steam generating plant to support large-scale commercial production of DR-grade pellets.

The company broke ground on the project in March 2018, with the execution of the project concluding after nearly 300,000 labour hours of work, it said. Construction jobs created for the project included 150 people employed at peak construction, which included management, craft and labour.

“With the conclusion of the project, Northshore Mining will be the only US-based iron ore processing facility to produce low silica DR (direct reduction)-grade pellets,” the company said.

The Northshore operation will immediately start to produce DR-grade pellet feedstock for Cliffs’ hot briquetted iron Plant in Toledo, Ohio, a $830 million investment that will be commissioned in mid-2020, as well as DR-grade pellets to be exported to “a new clientele of DRI (direct reduced iron) producers outside the US”, it said.

McMahon welcomed to TNG Mount Peake vanadium-titanium-iron team

Energy minerals, Industrial minerals, Mineral project development, Mining project news, Mining services, , , , , , , ,

TNG has engaged construction group McMahon Services to progress the program of work for the non-process infrastructure (NPI) requirements for its flagship 100%-owned Mount Peake vanadium-titanium-iron project, in the Northern Territory of Australia.

The contract encompasses the NPI at both the Mount Peake mine site, located 235 km north of Alice Springs, and the Darwin TIVAN® processing facility, and will be undertaken in parallel with the front-end engineering and design study for the project being progressed by SMS group.

The NPI requirements for the project include but are not limited to haul roads, airfield upgrades, concentrate handling infrastructure, water and power infrastructure, accommodation facilities and concentrate storage facilities, TNG said.

As part of its engagement, McMahon will advance the existing NPI planning developed by TNG and finalise detailed scopes of work and scheduling for the NPI across both sites. MCM will then work collaboratively with TNG to develop the tendering documents and implement the strategy and delivery framework for the NPI works packages.

“This will extend to any approvals, capital budgeting and detailed project scheduling, enabling progression into the detailed design and ultimately construction phases with selected contractors, in a manner consistent with TNG’s project execution strategy,” TNG said.

TNG’s Managing Director and CEO, Paul Burton, said: “We have been able to establish a global network of high-quality partners in the fields of engineering, project financing and product off-take to help us advance this world-class project towards financing and construction. We are delighted to add McMahon Services – a high calibre Australian contractor with an existing strong footprint in the Northern Territory – to our project development team.”

An updated definitive feasibility study on Mount Peake from 2017 envisaged pre-production capex of A$853 million ($617 million) for a 3 Mt/y project ramping up to 6 Mt/y in year five. This would see 24.3 Mt of magnetic concentrate turned into 10.6 Mt iron oxide and 243,000 t of vanadium oxide.

Nordmin to survey European Electric Metals’ Skroska project in Albania

Base metals, Energy minerals, Equipment maintenance, High tech minerals, Mine shafts and equipment, Mineral exploration, Mineral project development, Mining services, Steel and iron ore, , , , , , ,

European Electric Metals has engaged the Nordmin Group of Companies to undertake a site inspection and to comment on the apparent condition of the surface and underground infrastructure and equipment of the Skroska project in Albania.

The site inspection will allow Nordmin to judge whether the existing underground workings and mine equipment can be used if the operations at the Skroska mine are restarted at present capacity of approximately 200 t/d. It will also allow the company to ascertain the requirements for potential expansions.

The Skroska deposit had a ‘historic’ resource of 22.4 Mt of laterite grading 0.99% Ni, 49.13% Fe and 0.065% Co. The laterite deposit is estimated to range from 2 m to 10 m in thickness and to average approximately 6 m thick.

The deposit occurs between the ultramafic rocks below and limestone on top or as a capping. The limestone is a competent rock making it an excellent candidate for use as a natural roof for the open stope underground mining method employed historically at the mine and proposed for the future.

Records indicate around 1.15 Mt of laterite ore was mined during 1985-1990 (by the state-owned mining enterprise) and between 2008-2013 (by a local private company).

The Nordmin Group of Companies is a 100% North American owned and operated provider of comprehensive EPC and EPCM solutions worldwide to industrial sectors spanning resource and project definition through construction and site closure. The group includes Nordmin Engineering, Nordmin Constructors and Nordmin Operators, and is based in Thunder Bay, Ontario with offices in Sudbury, Ontario, Kamloops, British Columbia and Salt Lake City, Utah.

European Electric Metals expects the technical team of Nordmin to be on site in December.

TNG “de-risks” Mount Peake vanadium-titanium-iron project with SMS contract

Energy minerals, Industrial minerals, Metallurgy, Mineral processing, Mineral project development, Mining equipment, Mining project news, Mining services, Steel and iron ore, , , , , , , , ,

TNG has signed up SMS Group to carry out the front-end engineering and design (FEED) phase of its Mount Peake vanadium-titanium-iron project in the Northern Territory of Australia.

The mandate for the contract encompasses the Mount Peake concentrator, the TIVAN® processing plant and all associated plant and equipment.

The two companies have been working together on the TIVAN process for some time. The process, developed by the two companies and Perth, Australia-based metallurgical consultants METS and the CSIRO, has been primarily designed for hydro-metallurgical extraction of vanadium, preferably as vanadium pentoxide, from a titano-magnetite orebody and also for separating the titanium and iron, preferably as ferric oxide and titanium dioxide.

The process has undergone more than six years of development including several successful pilot plant test stages, and is designed to use conventional and existing equipment currently used in extractive resources, TNG says.

In addition to the FEED contract for the process, plant and equipment, SMS’ scope will include providing a proposal for full procurement and construction, including the balance of plant and equipment to be provided on a turnkey, single-source, fixed price EPC basis.

Under the contract, SMS will now design and engineer the entire processing flowsheet for Mount Peake, which includes the concentrator, where magnetite concentrate is to be produced, and the downstream processing plant, where three high-purity products – vanadium pentoxide, titanium dioxide and iron oxide – will be produced.

Interestingly, SMS has agreed to provide to TNG production quantity, production rate and production quality guarantees, elements TNG Managing Director Paul Burton (pictured, left) said would significantly “de-risk” the project.

SMS’s responsible Managing Director Herbert Weissenbaeck (pictured, right) said the agreement was the logical next step in the development of TIVAN and Mount Peake – “which together have the potential to essentially disrupt the TiO2 pigment and vanadium space”.

The downstream processing plant will use TNG’s 100%-owned TIVAN process. The scope of work for the plant will include a titanium pigment plant – to be developed in collaboration with its nominated sub-contractor Ti-Cons.

An updated definitive feasibility study on Mount Peake from 2017 envisaged pre-production capex of A$853 million ($617 million) for a 3 Mt/y project ramping up to 6 Mt/y in year five. This would see 24.3 Mt of magnetic concentrate turned into 10.6 Mt iron oxide and 243,000 t of vanadium oxide.