Overview
| Stage | Production |
| Mine Type | Open Pit |
| Commodities |
|
| Mining Method |
|
| Production Start | ...  |
| Mine Life | 2062 |
Sino Iron is the largest magnetite concentrate operation in Australia, with some of the world’s biggest grinding mills, remains the world’s largest seaborne supplier of magnetite concentrate to China.
CITIC’s fully integrated operation features an open pit mine serviced by the biggest haul trucks in the world, a six-line concentrator and port terminal facilities at nearby Cape Preston. CITIC’s state-of-the-art power station and desalination plant are among the largest in the State.
Several litigation matters with the tenement holder are ongoing. In March 2023, the Supreme Court of Western Australia delivered its judgment in proceedings commenced by CITIC parties to secure long term approvals and tenure for the Project.
While the CITIC parties were unsuccessful in obtaining all the orders they sought, the judgment provides a pathway that should enable them to seek approval of a proposal for extension of the mine pit and expansion of waste rock storage. |
Source:
p. 38
CITIC Mining International through its Australian subsidiary, CITIC Pacific Mining, has developed and operate the Sino Iron project, the largest magnetite operation in Australia.
Contractors
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Summary:
The Sino iron project geologically lies near the George Palmer deposit, which is situated within the Hamerseley basin.
The Hamersley Basin, located in the Pilbara Block in northwestern Western Australia, is about 500 km long and 250 km wide, with a west-north westerly elongation. The basin is defined by the extent of the Hamersley Group sedimentary and volcanic rocks and contains extensive banded iron formations (BIFs) and large hematite-goethite iron deposits, which occur with the BIF units.
Archean (42800 Ma) granite-greenstone outcrops over most of the northern half of the Pilbara Block and is unconformably overlain by the Hamersley Basin in the southern half of the block except for a few exposures in inliers or domes within the basin.
The Hamersley Group conformably overlies the Fortescue Group and is conformably overlain by the Turee Creek Group. It is approximately 2.5 km thick and consists of four important iron formations separated by sequences of dolomites, shales and volcanics.
Summary:
The Sino Iron mine pit is over 2.6 square kilometres in area and will triple in size over the life of the project. The Company extracts the magnetite ore using traditional open pit mining techniques – drill and blast, then uses excavators to load the ore onto our haul trucks, which take the rock to four in-pit crushers.
The Company uses diesel electric MT6300 haul trucks for carting the iron ore from the pit to the crushers – this is an off-road truck engineered for high-production mining and heavy-duty construction environments.
At nearly 10 metres long and eight metres high, these trucks weigh 270 tonnes when empty and have 3,750 horsepower - each truck can haul around 360 tonnes at a time.
The Company has two types of drills at Sino Iron, the SKF15 and the Pit Viper 351.
The SKF fleet are ‘down-the-hole’, or ‘DTH’ drills, which means they have a hammer on the bottom of the drill that’s used to slowly smash through the rock until the desired hole depth is reached.
The PV351s are rotary drills – they use up to 120,000 pounds of pull-down force while the drill bit rotates, the downward pressure slowly chipping away the rock.
Source:
Source:
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Flow Sheet:
Summary:
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Production:
| Commodity | Units | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 |
|
Iron Ore
|
kt
| ...... | ...... | ...... | ...... | 17,472 | 15,470 | 10,010 |
All production numbers are expressed as concentrate.
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Operational Metrics:
| Metrics | 2018 |
|
Annual production capacity
| 27.6 Mt of iron ore concentrate |
Financials:
| | Units | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 |
|
Revenue
|
M HKD
| | | ...... |
12,700
|
9,804
|
3,600
|
|
After-tax Income
|
M
| ...... | ...... | ...... |
|
|
|
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Source:
| HME Type | Model | Size | Quantity | Ref. Date |
|
Drill
|
.......................
|
|
|
Sep 29, 2021
|
|
Drill
|
.......................
|
|
.......................
|
Oct 13, 2022
|
|
Drill
|
.......................
|
|
|
Oct 13, 2022
|
|
Shovel
|
.......................
|
|
|
Sep 29, 2021
|
|
Shovel
|
.......................
|
|
|
Sep 29, 2021
|
|
Shovel
|
.......................
|
|
|
Sep 29, 2021
|
|
Truck (haul)
|
.......................
|
360 t
|
|
Sep 29, 2021
|
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Corporate Filings & Presentations:
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