In a move flagged two weeks ago in WA Business News' hard copy edition, Australia's resource industry has some new competition with the official launch of CITIC Pacific Mining, proponents of the $5.2 billion Sino Iron Project planned for Cape Preston.
CITIC Pacific Mining is the Australian subsidiary of Hong Kong listed company CITIC Pacific.
Located 100 kilometres south-west of Karratha, Cape Preston will be home to the largest magnetite mining project in Australia and the first iron ore mine in Australia to include large scale downstream processing.
With an expected mine life of at least 25 years, the Sino Iron project is based on two billion tonnes of magnetite ore and is designed to export 27.6 million tonnes of a mix of high-grade pellets and concentrate each year.
A dedicated shipping fleet is being constructed to transport the product to steel mills in China belonging to CITIC Pacific and other companies.
The project involves construction of significant processing and support infrastructure including a magnetite concentrator, pellet plant, slurry pipeline, port facilities, a power station with a capacity of at least 450 megawatts, a 51 gigalitre desalination plant and an accommodation village. Much of this infrastructure will potentially be available for third party use.
CITIC Pacific Mining is working with the Western Australian government to secure changes to the State Agreement Act for the project and obtain other required approvals. Subject to these approvals being received, construction will commence in 2008.
The project will be officially launched at a stakeholder function tonight by CITIC Pacific's Hong Kong-based Chairman Larry Yung.
Mr Yung said he was pleased to be in Perth for the launch and was impressed with the progress being made on the project.
"This project is very significant for our company because it will deliver an integrated steel business during a time of advancing economic development in China," Mr Yung said.
"As our first major investment in Australia it has huge potential as it includes a further four options for project expansion, which would increase production to over 70 million tonnes a year."
The project is expected to employ 2500 people during construction, and 600 people during operations.
An Australia-wide recruitment campaign will commence early next year.
