mcc railway announcement

The following is a copy of the MCC railway statement,
There is also a reference to the outstanding $80m to Cape Lambert in the article

John

The Chinese state-owned group planning to develop an iron ore mine at Cape Lambert, east of Karratha, needs to ask Rio Tinto to shift a railway line to ensure the 15-million-tonne-a-year magnetite project can go ahead.

China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC) also needs the support of Epic Energy and Horizon Power to relocate key infrastructure from the project area for its proposed Cape Lambert mine.

Epic's 219km Pilbara Energy Pipeline and Rio's railway line, connecting iron ore mines with the Cape Lambert port, cross the area MCC wants to turn into an open pit capable of initially producing 15mtpa and later up to 25mtpa of magnetite concentrate.

MCC plans to export its concentrate from the yet-to-be-built Anketell Port development, 30km east of Karratha and 10km west of Rio's Cape Lambert port. Rio's Cape Lambert port is the most critical aspect of the mining giant's ambition to expand Pilbara iron ore production from 230mtpa to 330mtpa by 2016.

In its environmental referral documents, MCC said it hoped to begin construction of the Cape Lambert project in the second quarter of 2012, subject to a positive feasibility study and "future market conditions".

The target date for first ore shipments is 2015.

The low-profile MCC, which also has a 20 per cent stake in the $US5.2 billion ($5.7 billion) Sino Iron magnetite project developed by CITIC Pacific at Cape Preston, south-west of Karratha, is yet to reveal the likely development cost for Cape Lambert.

The Chinese group struck a $400 million deal two years ago to buy the deposit from Tony Sage's Cape Lambert Resources. The deposit contains 1.6 billion tonnes of magnetite.

MCC owes Cape Lambert Resources $80 million, due when the Chinese group is granted mining leases.

MCC is thought to have considered building a magnetite slurry pipeline to Sino Iron's Cape Preston port before joining a consortium of Aquila Resources and Fortescue Metals Group in proposing a new stand-alone export facility at Anketell Point.

Aquila, the driver of the Anketell Point project, wants to have the port operational as early as the end of 2013. Fortescue has tipped the port development cost at up to $4 billion.