Thanks for that sandfire ….
FWIW I’m putting a story in the spoiler about another project that recently announced it chosen to base it’s processing facility close to a major centre due to the strategic advantages. There may be some parallels.
“The savings in operating costs far outweigh the marginal extra cost of transporting ore to Kwinana rather than Kalgoorlie,” the company said.
To assume genuine experts did not throughly investigate which site was the best option before announcing it seems ignorant to me.
Cheers
Cost factors mean Kwinana gets nod ahead of Kalgoorlie-Boulder for high-purity alumina processing facility Neil WatkinsonKalgoorlie Miner
Thu, 11 July 2024 2:00AM
The Lake Hope high-purity alumina project covers numerous prospective salt lakes across 238sqkm between Hyden and Norseman. Credit: Impact Minerals/Supplied
Cost factors have seen Kwinana chosen ahead of Kalgoorlie-Boulder as the processing site for a Goldfields-based high-purity alumina project. Impact Minerals, the company behind the $1.3 billion Lake Hope project west of Norseman, announced the news to the ASX on Wednesday.
Impact said Kwinana had been chosen to host the 10,000-tonnes-per-annum facility because of access to providers of the required input chemical reagents, buyers of the fertiliser and acid by-products, and access to suitable land.
The company said the combination of these factors provided substantial strategic advantages for the project, with savings on both capital expenditure and operational expenditure.
Impact had previously focused on the attributes of Kalgoorlie-Boulder to host the plant. On Wednesday, it said its decision was driven by the ready availability of the various chemical reagents needed for the process plant compared to the transport cost to get reagents to Kalgoorlie-Boulder.
“The savings in operating costs far outweigh the marginal extra cost of transporting ore to Kwinana rather than Kalgoorlie,” the company said.
In its project update on Wednesday, Impact said the prefeasibility study remained on schedule to be completed in the fourth quarter of this year.
Managing director Mike Jones said the study was like a large jigsaw puzzle.
“We know what the final picture looks like and are now starting to see many of the individual pieces falling into place at a great pace,” he said.
“We have been focused on the puzzle’s edges with progress made at the proposed mine at Lake Hope itself, the process plant, which will be in Kwinana and, increasingly, product offtake and marketing.”
Dr Jones said the company was in discussions with the Ngadju traditional owners about a land access agreement and cultural heritage management plan.
He said Impact was also preparing a mining lease application and completing drilling to help define a maiden reserve.
“We have selected Kwinana as the site for the processing plant and our proprietary low-temperature leach as the best method to scale up high-purity alumina production to the planned 10,000 tonnes per annum because of substantial strategic advantages.
“As a result, we recently commissioned CPC Engineering to provide design engineering and capital and operating costs for the LTL process plant on that site.”
Dr Jones said Impact was looking at ways of accelerating a pilot plant development that would provide high-purity alumina in quantity to potential customers, and was also starting to assemble a marketing team to reach out to them.
“We continue on schedule to complete the prefeasibility study by the end of the year and set ourselves up for significant strides towards production in 2025,” he said.
AVL Price at posting:
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