Hi Sabine,Earlier this year I did suggest that we should look to...

Hi Sabine,

Earlier this year I did suggest that we should look to a late first quarter 2022 announcement about port allocation, based on my theory that the Port Hedland Port Authority would probably finalise its analysis and report its findings late in December. So far it's progressing as I expected. I don't know how much tonnage the contested berths have available but it could be more than the 30MT that Min Resources needs for Sth West Creek, so perhaps will be a shared berth which requires more complex negotiations.

In a worst case situation, I'm pretty sure that Chis Ellison has previously indicated that Ashburton port would be a fallback option, although not desirable. Looking at the map, it would appear that taking the ore from Marillana to Ashburton would traverse Min Resources Ashburton Hub, so some economies of scale/shared infrastructure could offset the longer transport route. The other thing is that Port Hedland authority has also raised the fees for Pt Hedland which could be significantly more than Ashburton, again offsetting some of the additional haulage costs. I have no idea how much the additional trucks needed for the longer trucking distance and turnaround time would cost.

It will be interesting to know if China's commitment to reducing Australian iron ore imports has been factored into the Port Authority's decision.