The Project area lies within the Hamersley Range which is principally comprised of rocks of the Brockman Iron Formation. Further north is the broad expanse of the Fortescue Valley,
which was formed by the preferential erosion of the Wittenoom Formation and includes deep layers of Cainozoic sediments.

The Koodaideri mine area contains martite-geothite mineralisation predominantly within the Dales Gorge Member of the Brockman Iron Formation, with lesser mineralisation in the Joffre Member. A variable thickness hydrated capping overlies the deposits, which is permeated with numerous cavities. The orebody is underlain by the Mount McRae Shale and Mount Sylvia Formations.

Mining Operations
All of Hamersley Iron's mines are conventional open pits using track and shovel mining method with preliminary drilling and blasting. The drill holes are filled with an explosive, most often ANFO (Ammonium Nitrate/Fuel Oil) and then charged. The resulting blast breaks the material to a size required for digging.

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 the ship loader.

Vessels are loaded at the berths alongside the ore wharf. Lump ore is rescreened to remove undersize material. Reclaimed ore is conveyed along the wharf and the ore is loaded into the vessel’s holds by travelling, slewing and luffing shiploaders.

Crushing facility will consists of primary gyratory crushing and secondary cone crushing.

The primary crushing facility comprises the following key equipment:
- ROM dump hopper;
- Maintenance crane;
- ROM Bin Rockbreaker;
- Primary gyratory crusher assembly;
- Primary crusher discharge surge bin
- Apron feeder;
- Crusher discharge conveyor;
- Conveyor weightometer, tramp metal detector and magnet;
- Ducted dust collection system;
- Primary crusher sump;
- Dust suppression, and fire protection system; and
- Compressed air system and water services.

The Secondary Crushing Facility receives oversize material from Product Screening Facility and re-crushes the material prior to it being conveyed back to the Product Screening Facility for re-screening. There will be two secondary cone crushers each with a design capacity of 3,300 t/h (wet).

The application also includes two mobile crushing and two mobile screening plants to be used during construction only.

The Koodaideri Iron Ore Mine will produce 43 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa) of Saleable Ore Product (SOP) as lump and fines from coarse ore feed.

In order to process coarse ore feed into saleable ore product, the Koodaideri processing plant will include facilities for crushing, screening, stockpiling and loading onto rail transport.

Mobile crushing and screening units will be required to support mine earthworks. When constructed,the Koodaideri processing plant willoperate 24 hours perday, 7 days per week.

Run of Mine (ROM) ore will be delivered by haul truck to a primary gyratory crusher located to the north west of the K58W pit. The high-grade (HG) primary crushed ore will be processed through a dry crushing and screening plant to produce HG lump and HG fines product.

Seven double-deck banana screens will provide the required production throughput and achieve the required product specifications, which will divide the ore into three strea ........