Summary

Mine Type	Open Pit
Status	Active
Commodities	Tungsten Iron Ore
Mining Method	Truck & Shovel / Loader
Production Start	...
Mine Life	...
Snapshot	The Kara mine has been productive since 1978 and the mine resources exceed 20Mt. The Kara ore body has favourable properties and the processing plant that is specifically designed to produce high-quality natural magnetite powders. The Kara mine is the production site. Magnetite primarily mined and scheelite being extracted as a by-product (of magnetite processing operations). Production numbers has not been publicly available since 2017.

Deposit type

• Skarn

Summary:

A number of magnetite skarns lie within, or adjacent to, the outcrops of the Housetop, Ringwood and Kara granites. Turner (1989) lists magnetite skarns at Kara No I, Kara No 2, Sutton's, Hampshire (near the railway crossing), Redwater Creek, Laurel Creek and Peak Hill Farm. In the past, these magnetite bodies were worked sporadically as sources of iron for steel making, for example, at Pearson's workings in the Kara No 2 Main deposit. Some of the magnetite skarns contain economic concentrations of scheelite, for example Kara No 1, Eastern Ridge, Bob’s Bonanza, Location 5 and Kara 266.

Several scheelite-magnetite skarns occur on the Kara mine lease. The skarns are developed within folded Ordovician limestone rocks which are in contact with Devonian granite.

"Several scheelite-bearing garnet-diopside magnetite-amphibole- vesuvianite skarns have formed at a transitional boundary between siliceous sandstone and quartzwacke (Moina Sandstone) and overlying Gordon Group limestone. Most deposits are within a synformal structure in the Ordovician sedimentary rocks which are underlain and intruded by porphyritic and equigranular biotite-hornblende granite of the magnetite-series of the Devonian Housetop Granite.

The main deposits are within a trough-like pendant of skarn within the Housetop Granite. At Kara No.1 ore-grade scheelite mineralisation forms an irregularly-shaped blanket draped 15 25 m above the granite. Between the skarn and the granite is a tungsten-poor, quartz-epidote reaction zone. Skarn lithologies are varied but there is a sharp division between magnetite dominant and garnet (grossular-andradite) dominant units.

Two ore samples from the Kara mine were collected on site from the run-of-mine (ROM) stockpile, reflecting two types of mineralisations:
• scheelite-bearing feldspar-rich host rock;
• scheelite-bearing magnetite ore.

Mining Methods

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Comminution

Crushers and Mills

Processing

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Commodity Production

Operational metrics

Personnel

Job Title	Name	Profile	Ref. Date
.......................	.......................		Jan 17, 2025