citic bringing in the big rollers

Big rollers
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Wednesday, November 28, 2007

SOME of the biggest mining equipment in the world will be coming to Western Australia's Pilbara thanks to the CITIC Pacific Mining's Cape Preston magnetite project. By Noel Dyson.

While the Pilbara is no stranger to massive pieces of mining kit, it has yet to see the likes of a Terex RH400 hydraulic excavator. At 1000 tonnes it is the largest in the world and an order has been placed for the CP Mining project.

There is also a fleet of Terex MT6300 electric drive haul trucks. With their 363t payload they are the biggest trucks to be plying the haul roads of the Pilbara.

Then come the LeTourneau L2350 wheel loaders. These electric drive behemoths are the largest front-end loaders in the world.

The CITIC project, officially launched on Monday night, is a $5.2 billion project that will be designed to export 27.6 million tonnes of a high-grade pellet and magnetite concentrate mix a year. The mine is expected to have a 25-year life span.

The product will be shipped to steel mills in China belonging to CITIC and other companies.

While the full annual production is yet to be completely committed, CITIC Pacific Mining CEO Barry Fitzgerald said contracts for the remainder were being finalised.

There are some changes that need to be made to the State Agreement Act that governs the project and other approvals need to be obtained.

Those aside, Fitzgerald expects some work to start onsite in December and major works to commence in March.

The project involves building processing and support infrastructure including a magnetite concentrator, pellet plant, port facilities, a 450MW power station, 51-gigalitre desalination plant and an accommodation village.

The company is considering making a lot of this infrastructure available for third-party use.

There has been some controversy over contracts attached to the design and construction of the project. Unusually for an Australian mining project, most of the engineering and design work will be done in China.

There have also been concerns that the bulk of the construction workers will be brought in from China.

Fitzgerald said the reason for using Chinese engineers was two-fold. Firstly, winning tenderer MCC's bid was much more competitive than the other companies tendering.

Secondly, MCC has a great deal of experience in constructing magnetite processing plants.

"China is a world leader in magnetite mining and the Chinese-Australian collaboration on this project will enable the transfer of expertise and technology in magnetite mining and processing to Australia," Fitzgerald said.

"As well as developing new skills in magnetite mining, downstream processing adds more than double the value to the Australian economy of traditional iron ore projects."

The project is expected to employ 2500 people during construction and 600 people during operations.

Fitzgerald said the company would be searching for staff throughout Australia but did not rule out bringing in people from overseas to make up any shortfalls.

However, he is confident most staff will be attracted from Australia because the sheer scope and complexity of the project will be attractive in itself.

Indigenous Pilbara-based contractor Central Mining and Contracting is already an alliance partner with CITIC Pacific Mining in the project.