State Western Australia Products Iron ore Company Atlas Iron Opened 2010 | Country Australia Website Atlas website Year of acquisition 2008 Location Pilbara | |
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Production 20 million tonnes/annum | ||
The Wodgina mine is an iron ore mine located in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, 90 kilometres south of Port Hedland.
The mine is fully operated by Global Advanced Metals and the facilities and tenement are shared, by contract, with Atlas Iron.
Overview
Atlas purchased the Iron ore mining rights for Wodgina from Talison Minerals Pty Ltd, now known as Global Advanced Metals, in February 2008.
The project was fast tracked by Atlas, going from the first drilling program to production in just over one and a half years. However, the company was greatly helped by the fact that it was able to use the existing but unused processing infrastructure of the tantalum mine owned by Global Advanced Metals in the area. At the time, the tantalum mine had been placed on care and maintenance by Global Advanced Metals and in January 2011, the company announced that it would restart tantalum production. Less than a year after it reopened, Global Advanced Metals announced that due to softening global demand, tantalum mining operations would cease at the end of February 2012.
In July 2010, Atlas commenced production on its Wodgina mine. The company plans to lift production from its Pilbara operations to 20 million tonnes of iron ore by 2012, up from 6.5 million tonnes in late 2010. Of these, 10 million tonnes are scheduled to come from the new Turner River hub, which is to blend and process ore from the company's northern Pilbara projects, located at Wodgina, Abydos and Mt Webber.
Atlas is hopeful to come to terms with BHP Billiton in regards to using the company's rail infrastructure, the Goldsworthy railway, in the future. BHP, in late 2010, had agreed to a joint feasibility study into how an arrangement might work.