Pilbara iron ore hopeful Brockman has secured a multi-user agreement and stockyard land lease for use of facilities at the Utah Port Bulk Handling Facility at Port Hedland, WA, but says progress has stalled on a potential private railway.
Brockman is developing its Project Maverick site 270 kilometres from the port, but says Project Maverick is just a small portion of the large Marillana mineralisation it owns the rights to.
The company has long term aims to use rail to move its iron ore to port, but for now has a deal in place with Qube to use road trains to move 2.5 million tonnes of iron ore to port every year.
It said this week progress elsewhere on its overall iron ore export project had meant “limited progress” had been made on an independent railway study advised last quarter.
“The independent railway is one of a number of logistics solutions being considered by the company,” the company said.
Brockman business development director Hendrianto Tee said the Utah Point multi-user agreement and stockyard land lease were subject to a number of conditions, related to Brockman securing funding for Project Maverick, and confirming its intention to commence with the Pilbara Port Authority within specified dates.
He said the company continues to make solid progress towards developing the deposit, and is in “the final phase” of selecting preferred mine site contractors, with targets of the first quarter of 2017 for the start of construction, and the first quarter of 2018 for commissioning.
“Gaining port access is a very significant and important step in the development of Project Maverick as the cornerstone for a larger scale operation at Marillana,” Tee said.
“It provides a key element of infrastructure certainty and a strong platform from which to advance other project milestones.
“Brockman appreciates the steadfast cooperation from the PPA in progressing and finalising these significant agreements.”
Project Maverick, 100 kilometres northwest of Newman, would be a pit to mine roughly 83.8 million tonnes of iron ore and 27.8 million tonnes of waste over a 13-year period.
Brockman says it would beneficiate the ore to produce 35.7 million tonnes of final product, equating to an ultimate production capacity of between 2.5 and 3.0mtpa.
The initial development would be with the aim of setting Brockman up to develop the full Marillana operation, which would introduce its high-grade product (61.5% Fe) and operate at up to 20mtpa.