PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The New South Wales Department of Planning and Environment has reconfirmed Carpentaria Exploration's Hawsons iron project as a state significant development (SSD), first awarded in 2012.
SSD status is given to projects considered significant owing to their size. Carpentaria said the SSD status and the provision of revised environmental assessment requirements was in response to a revised project description, which aligns with the current prefeasibility production scenario.
“The New South Wales government and related governments have continued to show strong support for our Hawsons project, which has the potential to generate new jobs and wealth for the Broken Hill region,” said Carpentaria MD Quentin Hill.
“Subject to funding, an environmental-impact statement supporting the award of a mining lease could be lodged as early as this year, helping to derisk the project for potential new investors.”
A prefeasibility study on the project is currently being conducted targeting a ten-million-tonne-a-year operation, and will be completed by the end of June.
The project currently has a resource estimate of some 2.3-billion tonnes.
“Amid projections of constrained pellet feed supply in Asia and direct reduction feed globally due to increasing demand and a typically high cost of production for new projects, Hawsons is targeted to be one of the few high-grade pellet feed projects that is competitive at long-term iron-ore prices,” Hill said.
“Hawsons is well placed to be the first in the queue for development as steelmakers from Asia and the Middle East seek new sources of supply,” he added.