Name of the Project
Lake Disappointment sulphate of potash (SoP) project.

Location
The project is located 340 km east of Newman, in north-western Western Australia.

Project Owner/s
Reward Minerals.

Project Description
Lake Disappointment is ideally positioned to become the biggest brine SoP producer outside of China. It consists of a tenement package that covers more than 3 000 km²,  which hosts an indicated and inferred extractable mineral resource of 153-million tonnes of SoP grading 11.3 kg/m³ of SoP brine in sediments from surface to a depth of about 90 m.

The project entails the construction of a 400 000 t/y SoP processing facility.

Brine will be collected from a network of shallow trenches across the lake and then pumped into shallow evaporation ponds to concentrate the brine by evaporation, and crystalise about 18-million tonnes a year of solid waste salts (halite) and 2.9-million tonnes a year of crude potash salts.

Potential Job Creation
Not stated.

Net Present Value/Internal Rate of Return
The project has a pretax net present value, at an 8% discount rate, of A$517.6-million and an internal rate of return of 18.8%, with a payback of 5.7 years.

Capital Expenditure
Initial capital expenditure is estimated at A$450.6-million.

Planned Start/End Date
Not stated.

Latest Developments
The Lake Disappointment SoP project has scaled another hurdle with the federal Department of Agriculture, Water and Environment granting an environmental approval for the project.

“This is one of our most significant achievements to date for the project, which now has the major environmental approvals in place that will allow full production at the prefeasibility study level of 400 000 t/y of high quality, organically certifiable SoP for decades to come,” Reward CEO Greg Cochran has said.

Lake Disappointment is the first SoP project in Australia to be permitted under the dual standards of a six-week public environmental review process at state level, and under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

The Western Australian Minister for Environment has previously approved Lake Disappointment.

Key Contracts and Suppliers
CPC Project Design (study management, process plant design, project implementation, capital and operating cost estimates); ERCOSPLAN Ingenieurbüro Anlagentechnik (independent process design and flowsheet review); Knight Piesold Australia (brine collection and pond layout and design, hydrological assessment and drainage design); AEthos Consulting (environmental-impact assessment); Global Groundwater (extractable resource estimation); Strategic Water Management (hydrological investigation and process-water bore field design and permitting); SBL Browne (metallurgical testwork, brine and sediment assay analysis) and Northshore Capital Advisors (financial modelling).

Contact Details for Project Information
Reward Minerals, tel +61 8 9386 46 99 or email admin@rewardminerals.com.