The Kiirunavaara ore body consists of magnetite ore with magmatic intrusions. The ore body stretches about 4km along the strike in the N 10° E direction with an average width of around 80m, dipping at about 60° SE towards the Kiruna city (Nordqvist and Wimmer, 2014). The average iron content for the ore body is 64% (Nordqvist and Wimmer, 2014), but the grade varies, and the iron content can reach up to 69% (Rutanen, 2011). In general, the ore quality is better in the middle part of the ore body and poor near the hanging wall and footwall contact (Henrikki Rutanen, personal communications, 2015).

The Kiirunavaara mine has a continuous and massive ore deposit which allows a standard mine design layout.

Most of the mining at the Kiirunavaara mine is done via transverse SLC layout; i.e. cross cuts are oriented perpendicular to the strike of the ore body. Longitudinal SLC is practiced in some areas where the ore width is narrow; i.e. the drifts and cross cuts are parallel to the strike of the ore body. The general mine layout at the Kiirunavaara mine has evolved over a long period; its hybrid layout can adapt to ore width and shape. Some transverse drifts transform into longitudinal drifts near the hanging walls, allowing better recovery. Other transverse drifts branch to accommodate either the ore shape or to handle disturbed mining areas with the objective of reducing development costs. In general transverse SLC layout is preferred over longitudinal SLC layout due to rock mechanics related issues (Patricia Boeg-Jensen, Personal communication, 2015).

The sublevel interval in the Kiirunavaara mine is 29m (floor to floor) and drift spacing is 24.7m (centre to centre) (Susanne Karppinen, personal communication, 2015). The drift spacing is 21m (centre to centre) for blocks 38 and 41 (Susanne Karppinen, personal communication, 2015). The production drift is 7m wide and 5.2m high (Jonsson, 2015).

The Kiirunavaara mine uses a standard SLC ‘silo-shaped’ ring design; it has normally 8 drill holes with 54m long mid holes (60m in some cases) and side holes with a side angle of 73° (Wimmer, 2014). The diameter of production holes is 115mm (Wimmer, 2014). The distance between two adjacent holes at the end of the bore hole can be a maximum of 4m (Susanne Karppinen, personal communications, 2015).

In Kiruna, mining takes place in an underground mine with a current main haulage level 1,365 metres below ground.

The ore is processed above ground in three concentrating and pelletising plants.

In the concentrating plants the crushed ore goes through several stages of grinding and magnetic separation using water in order to release and remove impurities before the concentrated product (slurry) goes on to the processing plants to be made into pellets. The iron content has then increased from around 62 percent to around 68 percent.

In the pelletising plant the slurry is filtered and a binder (bentonite) is added before the iron ore concentrate is rolled into 10-millimetre pellet balls. The pellets are dried, preheated, sintered and then cooled down before being transported to a storage silo for onward transport by rail to the ports of Narvik and Luleå.