With an accident causing its Onslow Iron haul road to be temporarily paused, Mineral Resources (MinRes) has redirected haulage via alternative routes.
Haulage is continuing via contractor vehicles, with the road expected to reopen and continue operations without impacting the company’s 2024–25 financial year production guidance.
The incident saw two road train trailers tip onto their side, with investigations underway through WorkSafe WA to scrutinise controls and risk mitigation of road train operations. No one was injured during the accident.
Onslow Iron’s haul road is a 150km dedicated fence and sealed road linking the Ken’s Bore mine site to the Port of Ashburton in WA.
The haulage road spans the shortest pit-to-port distance in Australia’s mining history.
MinRes sold 49 per cent of the Onslow Iron project’s dedicated haul road to Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners in September 2024 – a transaction valued at $1.3 billion.
Under the agreement, MinRes retains exclusive rights to use, operate and maintain the Onslow Iron haul road, and fully owns any tolling payments for iron ore volumes more than 40 million tonnes per year.
MinRes recently announced it’s tipped to reach nameplate capacity of 35 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa) in a matter of months.
The company is commissioning transhipper four to increase transhipping capacity to 28Mtpa. Transhipper five will arrive in April this year to further increase capacity to 35Mtpa.
Each transhipper has a loading rate of 8000 tonnes per hour and an unloading rate of 6000 tonnes per hour.
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