PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Junior Hawsons Iron has flagged a potential port developing at Myponie Point, in South Australia.
The ASX-listed company has signed a two-year option agreement to purchase three contiguous parcels of land suitable for developing an export facility for the Hawsons iron project.
The agreement gives Hawsons the right to purchase the three blocks of land totalling 1 000 acres, for A$14-million at any time within two years of the execution date.
Hawsons MD Bryan Granzien said the agreement strategically underpinned the memorandum of understanding (MoU) executed earlier with Flinders Ports, moving Hawsons closer again to its goal of supplying high-grade products, essential for decarbonising steelmaking.
“This agreement secures a crucial export site required for the planning and development of our 20-million-tonne-a-year project and importantly provides significant additional space to accommodate expansion of the Myponie Point Port into a multi-user, bulk commodity export facility,” he said.
“Now that we have identified our port location, planning and detailed design work can continue on the deep-water port facility and the underground slurry pipeline from Broken Hill, including all approvals and land access agreements along the 392 km pipeline route.”
Granzien said Hawsons stood to gain from an opportunity to participate in the future growth of the Myponie Point Port as its "cornerstone" customer by securing additional space required to support development and expansion.
Myponie Point Port is expected to be ready to start exporting Hawsons’ magnetite concentrate by the second half of 2024.
A 2017 prefeasibility study into the Hawsons project estimated that the 10-million-tonne-a-year operation would require a capital investment of $1.4-billion, and would have a mine life of 22 years.