Olympic Dam and the wider copper province in the far north of South Australia are set to benefit from a series of new growth-enabling projects announced by BHP this week.
The company will invest over $840 million to strengthen the foundations of underground mining productivity.
Among the new projects in development will be an underground access tunnel into the southern mine area to provide access to a new section of the resource.
A new backfill system will deliver paste fill via underground pipeline to new areas of the mine. This will open up further sections of the ore body that have been inaccessible up until now.
BHP also has plans to expand its ore pass capacity and streamline ore handling procedures. This will be supported by an expanded underground electric rail network, with new locomotives and an additional 1.15km of track. The combined project is designed to reduce truck haulage and improve safety and efficiency on the site.
Finally, the company will install a new oxygen plant on the Olympic Dam site. This will support the smelter’s debottlenecking program, and improve concentrate smelting rates from 80 to 85 tonnes per hour.
Oxygen is used to separate and remove the sulphur and iron impurities from copper concentrate, creating blister copper at 99 per cent purity. This is then cast into copper anodes and refined into final products, including copper cathode, gold, and silver.
BHP chief operating officer Edgar Basto said that together the projects would help grow the precinct’s annual copper base from 1.7 million tonnes to 2.5 million tonnes.
“The South Australian copper province is already performing strongly, consistently delivering more than 300,000 tonnes a year for the past three years,” he said.
“We are progressing a series of strategic projects that will strengthen our base business and help lay the foundations for future growth.”
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