Mineralogy doubts CITIC’s urgency in court

A lawyer for Clive Palmer’s Mineralogy has questioned CITIC Pacific Mining’s claim of urgency in the latter’s bid to speed up the legal proceedings in the Supreme Court of Western Australia.

Hong Kong-based CITIC Pacific and its Australian subsidiaries, Sino Iron and Korean Steel, took the Queensland billionaire’s company to WA’s Supreme Court, lodging a writ earlier this year.

CITIC Pacific claimed Mineralogy refused to agree to a set of interim proposals that would expand its mine footprint at the Sino Iron magnetite project site in the Pilbara.

Mineralogy holds the tenement for the site, and has been involved in legal disputes with CITIC over the Sino Iron project for about a decade.

CITIC is seeking urgent court orders for Mineralogy to approve the interim proposals and to expedite the legal matter before it runs out of space to mine, the court was told yesterday.

However, Mineralogy has applied to stay or halt the proceedings while appeals from the parties’ previous disputes remain ongoing in the Court of Appeal.

Speaking to the court today, Mineralogy’s lawyer Peter Dunning KC said the language CITIC used in its letters to Mr Palmer about the matter did not show the urgency it claimed.

Mr Dunning told the court CITIC’s application to expedite the matter was because the project had become less profitable.

“In its current state, it might not be able to operate optimally,” he said.

In his submissions to the court yesterday, CITIC’s lawyer Noel Hutley SC said the Court of Appeal could take a significant amount of time to decide on the matter.

Speaking to the court today, Mr Dunning said the timetable proposed by CITIC was not realistic.

“In our submission, it’s just not realistic…the length of a trial is not reason to refuse a stay,” he said.

CITIC last month announced that it has reduced its annual production at the Sino Iron project because of physical constraints, having reached the boundary of its approved mine footprint after more than a decade of production.

In its statement, CITIC said Mineralogy has refused to cooperate to submit the proposals required to increase the operating footprint.

“Given the urgency of the situation, the CITIC entities have launched a new legal proceeding in the Supreme Court of Western Australia, seeking orders to compel Mineralogy to submit the interim proposals to the state for approval,” the company’s ASX statement reads.