The Solomon Project area (Firetail, Kings & Queens deposits) is situated approximately 60 kilometres to the north of the Tom Price township in the northern Hamersley ranges. Outcropping geology in the project area is dominated by the Dales Gorge, Whaleback Shale and Joffre Members of the Brockman Iron Formation which hosts large BID throughout the Hamersley Province. The Firetail deposit contains the major tonnages of BID at Solomon, where geological favourable environments have allowed for the formation and preservation of large tonnages of iron mineralisation.

Incised into this bedrock geology are regional palaeochannel systems, predominantly one to two kilometres in width, and stretching for tens of kilometres. During the Miocene period deep chemical weathering and erosion of the generally iron rich material into these fluvial channels formed CID. Through Fortescue’s interpretation of drill hole results, the CID can be subdivided into an upper ‘hard CID’ and a lower ‘ochreous CID’. Clay lenses are observed as semi-discrete bands often several meters thick, sometimes of a poddy nature although often traceable between drill holes. Approximately 40 km of buried CID is preserved in the Kings CID system, with a further 25 km of CID located in the Serenity deposit to the west. Other CID occurrences are also known throughout the Solomon project area. The material overlying the CID (and other areas) has been eroded from adjacent mineralised and un-mineralised bedrock. This clastic material is concentrated into horizons of elevated iron grade termed DID, which forms part of the sequence of overlying late Tertiary aged alluvial and colluvial deposits.

Mining Methods
All stages of the mining operations is undertaken by contract mining, under the supervision of Fortescue site mining personnel. Mining uses conventional open pit methods of drill and blast followed by load and haul.

Excavators is employed to dig the material from working mine faces. The excavators load material into haul trucks for transport to either waste dump or ore stockpile locations.

Waste will be transported by haul trucks to waste dumps, located adjacent to the mine pits in the early years, and into mined-out areas of the pits in later years.

Mining is occured at multiple spatially separate pits, each working multiple mining faces simultaneously. The Run of Mine (ROM) ore from each mining area is blended at a number of separate crushing hubs to ensure a consistent mix of ore to achieve the required blend and contaminant levels. Two ROM pads and associated ROM feed bins are proposed at each crushing hub, one each for the CID and the BID/DID products, both of which feed conveyors that is transported ore to the OPFs. In some cases, stockpiles of ROM ore is employed to further enhance the degrees of blending.

The Firetail deposit consists of two mining areas, being the north and south limbs of a regional anticline (Firetail North and Firetail South). Each mine area extends over a length of approximately 7 km and is on average approximately 700 m in width.

The total proposed disturbance footprint associated with the Firetail mine and associated infrastructure is approximately 1,000 ha. All mining occurs above the water table and therefore no site specific groundwater management measures is required.

Pit Backfilling and Waste Disposal
Overburden from initial mining areas will be transported by haul trucks to permanent external waste dumps until sufficient voids are available for backfilling. In later years of mining, waste will be backfilled into depleted mine voids. Fortescue estimates that approximately 270 Mt of waste will be required to be disposed of to external waste dumps, while 1,730 Mt will be backfilled into mine voids.

The following strategy is envisaged for waste disposal:
- Firetail: During the initial phase of mining, most waste will be disposed of in an external waste dump located in the valley between the Firetail North and South deposits. After about Year 7, opportunities will exist to backfill mined out areas of the Firetail pits. The external waste dump will hold approximately 70 Mt o f waste and the remaining 40 Mt of Firetail waste will be back-filled in-pit.

Ore Processing
The Run of Mine (ROM) ore from each mining area is blended at a number of separate stockpiling areas and crushing huba to ensure a consistent mix of ore to achieve the required blend.

Crushing will involve combinations of primary, secondary and tertiary crushing as well as gravity concentration of the combined with the separation of sand and clay waste material. ROM pads and associated ROM feed bins are proposed at each crushing hub. Ore currently carried from the crushing hubs via conveyors to the OPFs at Kings and Firetail.

The mined ROM ore is transported to elevated pads (ROM pads) for tipping into a ROM feed bin at a number of separate primary crushing hubs. Two primary crushing hubs, with one for the Firetail (for Brockman ore) and one for the Kings (with the one for the Kings project comprising two crushing streams for CID and DID ore, and for the Firetail project comprising a single stream for BID ore). The primary crusher system consis ........