The Nammuldi iron ore mine is a part of Hamersley Iron Operation located in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, 60 kilometers north-west of Tom Price.
Mining Operations
The mining method employed uses conventional surface mining, whereby shovels and loaders are used to load drilled and blasted material into trucks for removal to waste dumps and stockpiles or feed to process plants.
The broken material is loaded for transport by face shovels, excavators or front-end loaders into haul trucks. Haul trucks at our operations are typically in the 190 tonne and 240 tonne class. Overland conveyors are used to transport partially crushed feed at sites where there are long distances between the pits and process plants.
Rail and port operations
Ore from processing facilities is railed up to 460 kilometres to the coast along a dedicated privately owned rail system. A typical train consist comprises 2 GE Dash 9 locomotives, 230 ore cars and is over 2.4 kilometres long. A single driver, supported by centralised track control, operates the train.
Once the train arrives at the port the ore cars go through the car-dumper. The ore cars are rotated and the ore flows out into bins and then is discharged onto conveyors.
The ore is stockpiled according to product type and the quality control plan. The travelling stackers create 250m long stockpiles. Rotary bucket-wheel reclaimers later reclaim the ore, which will be conveyed to ........