Tag Archives: Western Australia

GR Engineering secures EPC contract with Tellus at the Sandy Ridge kaolin project

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GR Engineering Services has entered into an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract with Tellus Holdings Ltd for its Sandy Ridge kaolin project in Western Australia.

Tellus, a public unlisted infrastructure development company in the business of developing geological repositories that provide waste storage, recovery and permanent isolation solutions and complementary salt and clay products, says it is after a fully integrated facility for the long-term storage, recovery and permanent isolation of hazardous and intractable waste and an associated kaolin mining operation, some 75 km northeast of Koolyanobbing, in Coolgardie.

The contract price is around A$50 million ($36 million), with the works to be delivered under a guaranteed maximum price model, GR Engineering said.

The company’s scope of work under the contract includes the EPC and commissioning of the waste cell infrastructure, access roads, raw water supply and other key facility infrastructure for the Sandy Ridge underground waste facility.

The contract is expected to be carried out in two stages, with stage one comprising engineering and design and long-lead procurement activities for the work. This stage is anticipated to commence in the coming weeks, subject to the satisfaction of conditions precedent, which primarily relate to Tellus’ proposed financing facilities.

Stage two execution of the works is intended to commence mid-year, subject to Tellus satisfying additional conditions relating to the balance of the Sandy Ridge project approvals, GR Engineering said. Stage two includes mining of the first open-pit kaolin pit (waste cell), plus container yards, site warehouses and offices, roads, a 71-room accommodation village and associated services and utilities.

Tellus said the facility commissioning and full operations are scheduled from early-2020.

GR Engineering’s Managing Director, Geoff Jones, said: “We are pleased to progress this opportunity with Tellus, which has followed GR Engineering’s involvement to date in the Sandy Ridge project’s feasibility study and preliminary design work.”

In addition to this contract, Tellus has signed a circa-A$2 million PMC contract with Turner & Townsend providing project management services that support the Tellus owners team in managing all development phase contracts including the EPC contract (above); ancillary construction and equipment supply contracts; and key operational contracts.

Tellus is proposing to develop the Sandy Ridge facility, Australia’s first dual open-pit kaolin mine and arid near-surface geological waste repository in a 70 million-year-old kaolin clay bed with a 25-year operating licence. The proposal would involve mining up to 290,000 t/y of kaolin clay and receiving up to 100,000 t/y of Class IV and V waste at the facility gate over 25 years.

Ausdrill’s Barminco to go underground at Regis Resources’ Rosemont gold project

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Having recently closed a deal to acquire fellow contractor Barminco, Ausdrill has announced A$171 million ($123 million) in new work across the mining space.

Its Barminco business has sealed a three-year underground mining services contract with Regis Resources at the Rosemont project (worth A$113 million), in addition to receiving the nod to perform decline rehabilitation and development works at Western Areas’ new Odysseus mine. Meanwhile, Ausdrill has booked a 12-month contract from Consolidated Minerals for the provision of exploration drilling services at the Woodie Woodie manganese mine. This comes on top of a similar contract with Bellevue Gold at its namesake project in the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia.

Ausdrill Managing Director, Mark Norwell, said: “These new projects demonstrate the diversity of the expanded Ausdrill group across different projects and resources, solid progress of Barminco, and the professional service our businesses have been providing to our customers.”

Rosemont has been a fully operational open-pit gold mine since March 2013 and is one of three Regis projects in the Duketon deposit area, 130 km north of Laverton in the Goldfields region of Western Australia.

Regis recently approved expansion of the mine to an underground operation located directly below the current Rosemont open pit, with Barminco to perform development and production work at the underground deposit. In August, the Regis board announced it had approved the development of an underground mining operation directly below the current Rosemont open pit exploiting the maiden underground mineral resource estimate of 1.4 Mt at 5.1 g/t for 230,000 oz of gold.

Barminco will commence mobilisation immediately and expects to employ around 100 staff at the project. Onsite works will commence in the March quarter, including commencing portal development at the southern end of the Rosemont Main open pit.

Barminco CEO, Paul Muller, said: “This project adds to Barminco’s extensive experience in the Western Australia Goldfields, with current mining projects at Sunrise Dam and Agnew. We will draw on our deep capability across Barminco’s people, equipment, systems, processes, and expertise in underground mining to ensure we provide a safe and reliable service at Rosemont and look to build a strong, long-term relationship with Regis.”

Meanwhile, the company has already mobilised on the 14-month contract to carry out decline rehabilitation and development works at Western Areas’ Odysseus mine. The contract builds on Barminco’s 14-years of continuous service for Western Areas at Forrestania, which includes the Spotted Quoll and Flying Fox mines where Barminco is the mining services provider.

Ausdrill’s work at the Woodie Woodie manganese mine, in the Pilbara of Western Australia, will commence next month, will run for 12 months and will require five RC drill rigs and one diamond drill rig to be drawn from the company’s existing fleet.

The company has already kicked off work at the Bellevue gold project, which will require around four diamond rigs to be drawn from the existing fleet.

 

Dacian Gold hits commercial stride as Mt Morgans ramps up production

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Dacian Gold has declared commercial production at its Mt Morgans gold operation in Western Australia, some nine months after producing its first gold bar at the mine.

The declaration, made on January 1, followed combined mining rates across the operation achieving feasibility study-design levels during the December quarter, the company said.

Production for the December quarter totalled 37,930 oz, a significant increase on the prior quarter and in line with the company’s guidance of progressively increasing output throughout its 2019 financial year. Gold poured for that quarter totalled 38,479 oz.

Dacian said underground mining was now underway across all three declines at Westralia (Beresford South, Beresford North and Allanson), while, at the Jupiter open pit, higher‐grade ore in the Cornwall Shear Zone was expected to be mined later in the current March quarter.

This combined progress across the operation will support continued operational momentum and underpin further quarterly increases in production throughout the remainder of Dacian’s 2019 financial year, the company said.

Dacian Gold Executive Chairman and CEO Rohan Williams said the declaration of commercial production was another example of the company meeting its development and production targets.

“We are pleased to have achieved this important milestone – exactly when we said we would,” he said. “It was an outstanding quarter, with production increasing 30% from the September quarter.”

Mt Morgans is expected to produce around 200,000 oz/y of gold at an all-in sustaining cost of around A$1,000/oz ($716/oz) when fully ramped up. This will come from a reserve base that totals 1.4 Moz.

Australian Potash close to sulphate of potash milestone at Lake Wells

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ASX-listed Australian Potash says it is poised to become the country’s first producer of sulphate of potash (SOP) from field evaporated salts after its pilot plant facility received 3 t of the final potassium-rich harvest salts from the Lake Wells pilot evaporation programme.

This announcement, made at the end of December, should lead to the company producing SOP from the project, in Western Australia, this month, according to Managing Director and CEO, Matt Shackleton.

“One area of focus for Australian Potash’s project team over the past 12 months has been to develop and refine the site evaporation model,” he said. “Understanding the chemistry of the salts that are produced through the natural evaporation cycle is crucial to planning both the commercial scale development and SOP processing strategies.”

“In January 2019, we plan to produce Australia’s first field evaporated SOP, which will be of enormous value to Australian Potash and our MOU (memorandum of understanding) offtake partners, as we will be able to detail the chemical composition of the SOP we can produce.”

Shackleton said 2019 was set to see the commissioning of a greenhouse SOP-MOP (muriate of potash) trial managed by the University of Western Australia’s School of Agriculture and Environment. “The trial will also be supported by field trials across at least five sites, examining the effect of SOP versus MOP,” he added.

Australian Potash expects to publish a definitive feasibility study on the Lake Wells potash project, around 500 km northeast of Kalgoorlie, in the second half of 2019. This will build on the results of a scoping study, which showed a stage one production rate of 150,000 t/y of “premium-priced” SOP (years one to five), a stage two production rate of 300,000 t/y of “premium-priced” SOP (years six to 20) and a pre-production capital expenditure of $135 million for stage one and $125 million for stage two.

Albemarle on course for 2021 commissioning at Kemerton lithium hydroxide conversion site

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Albemarle has begun earthworks at the Kemerton Strategic Industrial Area, in Western Australia, for the construction of the company’s Kemerton lithium hydroxide (LiOH) conversion site.

Albemarle recently received environmental approval from the federal and state government for the Kemerton plant and has followed this up with the groundbreaking.

Eric Norris, Albemarle President, Lithium, said: “The site earthworks at Kemerton today are on track with our projections. Achieving this milestone underscores our commitment and confidence in developing LiOH operations in Western Australia and in our overall strategy to drive significant shareholder value and meet our customers’ demands.”

The Kemerton plant is expected to have an initial capacity of 60,000 t/y of LiOH with an ability to expand to 100,000 t/y over time. The commissioning of the site is expected to start in stages during the course of 2021.

Fortescue’s new iron ore blend on its way to China steel mill

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The maiden shipment of Fortescue Metals Group’s new 60.1% Fe content product, West Pilbara Fines, has recently left Herb Elliott Port in Port Hedland, Western Australia, bound for Hunan Valin Steel in China.

Fortescue will produce 5-10 Mt of West Pilbara Fines in the year to end-June 2019 by blending higher iron, low alumina ore from the western pits at the Cloudbreak operations with ore from the Firetail mine. This involves the use of an innovative 5 km relocatable conveyor, provided by RCR Tomlinson.

When Fortescue’s$1.275 billion Eliwana iron ore project begins production in December 2020, production of West Pilbara Fines is expected to ramp up to 40 Mt/y.

Fortescue Chief Executive Officer, Elizabeth Gaines, said: “The production of West Pilbara Fines demonstrates the flexibility of our wholly–owned, integrated mining operations and infrastructure and the agility of our processing and blending strategy.

“For the last decade, we have delivered a range of differentiated products with a high value in use for our customers. As we look out to financial year 2019 and beyond, West Pilbara Fines will further enhance the range of ores available, as we continue to ensure that our quality control and product consistency are maintained at the highest levels for our customers in China, Asia and Europe.”

Chairman of Hunan Valin, Dr Cao Zhiaqiang, said: “We are very pleased to be the first steel mill customer for West Pilbara Fines. Fortescue continues to understand and respond to the market’s needs by expanding its product suite, while remaining focussed on delivering high value in use products.”

Micromine Pitram takes control at Independence Group’s Nova operation

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Micromine has signed a contract with Independence Group (IGO) to help drive productivity and cost efficiencies at the Nova nickel-copper-cobalt operation in the Fraser Range of Western Australia.

As part of the agreement, Micromine will implement at Nova its fleet management and mine control software solution, Pitram.

This implementation of Pitram, a mine control and management reporting system aimed at delivering mining production efficiencies, comes on the back of a resurgence in Western Australia’s nickel sector, which increased in value by 26% in 2017–18 to $2.6 billion, after several years of decline, Micromine said.

Nova began commercial operation in July 2017 and produced 22,258 t of nickel, 9,545 t of copper and 740 t of cobalt at a payable cash cost of A$2.78/lb ($2.01/Ib) of nickel in the 2018 financial year. Production is expected to increase some 20% in FY19 to 27,000-30,000 t of nickel, 11,000-12,500 t of copper, and 850-950 t of cobalt.

Micromine’s Pitram Operations Manager, Daren Hinchliffe, said Pitram would be used by operations personnel, to capture insights and data from mobile equipment and underground mining activities, in real time.

“Using Pitram’s voice-based mine control system, underground operators can call in their activities, locations and status to mine control, and performance results can be monitored constantly, allowing for continuous improvement,” he said.

Pitram’s automated technology allows shift supervisors to keep track of what is going on throughout the mine, while allowing constantly monitoring of results and performance, he added.

“This will provide IGO with critical data as to how the mine is performing and, help identify bottlenecks, enabling the company to respond quickly to opportunities to implement process improvements,” he said.

IGO’s Chief Operating Officer, Matt Dusci, believes this will drive significant value through productivity efficiencies and cost savings at Nova and, ultimately, serve as a platform for future integration with automation at the mine.

Micromine’s roll-out of Pitram at Nova commenced in December and is expected to be completed in early 2019.

Epiroc autonomous drill gets working on BHP’s South Flank iron ore project

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The first autonomous Epiroc Pit Viper 271 drill rig has broken ground at BHP’s South Flank iron ore project in Western Australia, the mining major confirmed.

This is the first of five autonomous drill rigs to operate at the mine, all of which will be controlled remotely from the BHP Integrated Remote Operations Centre in Perth.

BHP, which officially broke ground on the $3.6 billion project in July, is targeting first ore extraction in 2021 and expects to ramp up to 80 Mt/y of output. South Flank will replace production from the existing Yandi mine, which is reaching the end of its economic life. The company carried out the first blast at the project in September.

Epiroc says the Pit Viper 271 is the most productive drill available for rotary tricone and downhole drilling of 171 mm to 270 mm holes with up to 18 m cleanhole single pass capability.

It features a patented cable feed system with automatic tensioning for improved component life and low total cost of operation, with the standard Rig Control System (RCS) providing on board automation capability as part of the standard drill package to help deliver safety and productivity.

“With RCS you can run automation with an operator on board with options like auto drill and auto level, or you can run with the operator off the drill with the optional BenchREMOTE package, allowing one operator to run one or multiple units,” the company says.

“With the RCS system on Pit Vipers you can even achieve your ambition of fully-autonomous drilling with almost no human interaction with the drill.”

MACA to refurbish Adaman’s Kirkalocka gold project in Western Australia

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Contractor MACA has wrapped up a strong year with a contract award from Adaman Resources at its Kirklalocka gold project near Mt Magnet in Western Australia.

The contract, secured through its subsidiary MACA Interquip, includes installation of a new SAG mill and refurbishment of an existing mineral processing plant at Kirkalocka. MACA expects to book some A$28 million ($20.2 million) for the works, which will commence in February with a duration of eight months. Some 40 personnel are expected to be required.

MACA said the contract award follows early involvement with the Adaman management team, enabling advancement in the design process and the submission of long-lead items. Commencement of the project remains subject to finalisation of Adaman’s project finance documentation.

Operations Director Geoff Baker said MACA Interquip has an excellent record of successful refurbishment delivery, hence the contract award.

“Our alliance with NCP International, who manufacture grinding mills and install complete comminution circuits globally, as an installation partner, will provide MACA Interquip with further exposure as an integrated mineral processing supplier,” he said.

“The recent contract awards for MACA Interquip demonstrates the success of the MACA strategy to diversify its services within the resource industry.”

This new contract ensures a strong order book for MACA Interquip for 2019 when added to the letter of intent for the refurbishment of the gold processing plant for Echo Resources. Other recent and ongoing work on processing plants includes the Savannah nickel project for Panoramic Resources (pictured) and the Degrussa copper project for Sandfire Resources.

Back in October, SMS Mining Services, which owns a 33% stake in Adaman, secured preferred contractor status for Kirkalocka, with the four-year contract consisting of open-pit mining services including load and haul, drill and blast, and mine development. SMS said at the time drilling was underway to extend the mine life beyond the current six years.

SIMPEC to work on Tianqi Lithium’s Kwinana processing plant

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WestStar’s SIMPEC business has been awarded an A$8 million ($5.8 million) contract by MSP Engineering at the Tianqi Lithium Kwinana processing plant in Western Australia.

The award, the company’s largest contract to date, follows on from SIMPEC’s work for MSP at the Talison lithium CGP2 project in Greenbushes, WA, a mine owned 51:49 by Tianqi and Albemarle.

The work on the lithium hydroxide process plant (LHPP1) at Kwinana involves pyromet piping installation.

MSP is the head contractor for the design and construction of the Kwinana LHPP1 project, which is being designed to produce lithium hydroxide monohydrate from the processing of spodumene ore from the Talison Greenbushes operation. The plant will have a total output of 48,000 t/y upon completion, SIMPEC says.

With this award, the WestStar group has built an order book of some A$25 million, the company said.