Hawsons Iron Ltd says it has signed a two-year option agreement to purchase three contiguous parcels of land suitable for developing an export facility for its namesake project at Myponie Point on South Australia’s eastern Spencer Gulf.

The agreement gives Hawsons the right to purchase the three blocks of land totalling 1,000 acres (405 ha), for A$14 million ($9.7 million) at any time within two years of the execution date.

A full Bankable Feasibility Study (BFS) for the Hawsons Iron Project is underway and scheduled to be completed by the end of 2022. The Hawsons orebody’s softness, relative to ‘hard rock’ magnetite orebodies found in Western Australia’s Pilbara region, offers clear commercial advantage, the company says. It requires less energy during crushing and grinding to extract the magnetite concentrate, while a higher, 70% Fe grade is achieved because the ore is easily separated from impurities and waste.

The company has defined a 2012 JORC-compliant resource of 3,060 Mt at 13.1% Davis Tube Recovery (DTR) at a 6% cutoff for 400 Mt of concentrate with a planned production rate of 10-20 Mt/y over a 20-plus-year mine life.

Managing Director, Bryan Granzien, said the export facility agreement strategically underpinned the Memorandum of Understanding executed earlier with Flinders Ports Pty Ltd, moving Hawsons closer again to its goal of supplying high-grade products, essential for decarbonising steelmaking.

“This agreement secures a crucial export site required for the planning and development of our 20 Mt/y project and, importantly, provides significant additional space to accommodate expansion of the Myponie Point Port into a multi-user, bulk commodity export facility,” he said.

“Now that we have identified our port location, planning and detailed design work can continue on the deep-water port facility and the underground slurry pipeline from Broken Hill, including all approvals and land access agreements along the 392-km pipeline route.”

Granzien said Hawsons stood to gain from an opportunity to participate in the future growth of the Myponie Point Port as its ‘cornerstone’ customer by securing additional space required to support development and expansion. Myponie Point Port is expected to be ready to start exporting Hawsons’ Hawsons Supergrade® magnetite concentrate by the second half of 2024.