confirmation land purchase tumby bay, page-2

Centrex buys land for new port

Kristie Batten
Friday, 1 August 2008
MiningNews.Net

IRON ore hopeful Centrex Metals has reached agreement on terms for the purchase of 260 acres of land in the Tumby Bay district on the Eyre Peninsula of South Australia.

The acquisition is part of a long-term, two-port strategy for iron ore shipments from the company’s Wilgerup hematite project and its southern and south-central magnetite resources.

Earlier this year Centrex purchased wharf facilities at Proper Bay, Port Lincoln, for exporting 1-1.5 million tonnes of iron ore per annum from its Wilgerup iron ore project and said the land purchase at Tumby Bay would not affect those plans.

The land at Tumby Bay has the potential to support a deep-water, multi-user port facility.

The company’s Carrow magnetite deposit is 12km from the proposed port site, and the Mount Hill and Dutton Bay prospects are in the immediate area.

Centrex managing director Gerard Anderson told MiningNews.net that the tenements have a combined exploration target of 1.2 billion tonnes and the position of the land is ideal.

He said the acquisition would not affect the company’s standing in the Port Bonython Bulk Users Group, an alliance of four smaller iron ore hopefuls aiming to develop a shared port at the northern end of South Australia’s Spencer Gulf.

“Port Bonython is hopefully there to service our mineral deposits that we have up in the Middleback Ranges and possibly Bungalow,” Anderson said.

“We in no way want to undermine the work that Bob Duffin [Western Plains managing director] and his boys are doing up there and we’re part of that Spencer Gulf group and we wish them well and we want that thing to be a roaring success.

“But when you’ve got a large amount of exploration 300 to 400 kilometres away from Port Bonython with no infrastructure to get product – particularly bulk dry products – to Port Bonython, it says that two ports are needed on the Eyre Peninsula at least, in order to make it a viable proposition in the long term.”