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 alongsi ........
