Iron Road Ltd, an independent, South Australian focused iron ore project developer, is ready to build a major magnetite iron ore project on the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia. The community around Warramboo has traditionally been a farming region but if the open cut mine is established it would convert to a mining zone.
The prefeasibility study was announced by the company this week and managing director Andrew Stocks said that the open cut mine just outside Warramboo would create nearly a 1,000 jobs on the upper Eyre Peninsula over the next four years time. This would peak during the construction period and drop off after that.
He expected the construction work to begin in 2015. The managing director also said that the company was not particularly keen to pursue ‘fly in and fly out’ workers. He said that wherever possible they liked to employ locally and house locally.
Mr Stocks said that the mine life was currently pegged at about 12 years but drilling exploration is still ongoing with the hope to double that. The mine is likely to produce 12.4 million tonnes of iron ore concentrate annually and would require about 600 people on a permanent basis.
The Wudinna Council chairman Tim Scholz said that the prospect of 1,000 jobs and the economic prosperity that would bring to the community was exciting but that there was a way to go before that happened. Particularly the feasibility and bankable feasibility studies.
Current Project Status as per Iron Road
- Resource expansion drilling, further metallurgical test work and pre-feasibility study underway, including infrastructure studies.
- Current mineral resource is 328Mt @ 17.3% Fe. The Company has an internal goal of increasing the CEIP resource to 500Mt in the 2010 calendar year.
- The mineralisation drilled to date has returned average Davis Tube Recovery concentrate grades of ~70% Fe.
- Exploration potential of 2.8 - 5.7 billion tonnes of magnetite gneiss.