Explorer seeks new avenues for iron
Wednesday November 25, 2009
Eastern Iron is seeking potential partners for processing its iron ore products away from its Cobar region tenements after a recent feasibility study.
The study, which examined the economics of a direct shipping operation from the company’s tenements, found such a project would be uneconomic at current iron prices.
“In many respects the long, linear, shallow and unconsolidated style of mineralisation discovered by Eastern Iron is most similar to iron sands deposits and operations such as those in New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and South America,” Eastern Iron managing director Peter Buckley said.
“These low grade, bulk tonnage deposits are usually more suited to down-stream processing options, which may include pyro-metallurgy,” Mr Buckley said.
The study outlined the concepts behind the development of a low capital cost, 1.5million tonnes per annum direct shipping operation at Eastern Iron’s Belah Tank prospect.
The design concept which the study
was based on proposed that the ore be
dry-screen and pre-concentrated through
magnetic separation before being trucked
to a rail siding at Hermidale and transported by rail to Newcastle.
The study found the project’s remote location meant transportation costs would be very high.
“The Eastern Iron tenements contain
very large tonnages of ore but at very low grades.
“Although unit mining costs are relatively low due to the shallow nature of the deposits and the ease of mining, product mining costs are impacted due to the combination of low grade and low recovery,” Mr Buckley said.
He said examination of a downstream ore processing option was outside the scope of the study.
The mining concept envisaged in study examined a number of details for a future operation, including the use of excavators, loaders and trucks to mine the material, with no drilling or blasting required, with the material to be hauled to a mobile plant.
“The final plant design would be a compromise between throughput requirement, ease of relocation and efficiency,” Mr Buckley said.
“Plant services, especially power, are required to be readily relocatable, indicating the usage of gen-sets rather than main grid power,” he said.
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