After officially closing the doors on its Yilgarn Hub iron ore operations in the Western Australian Goldfields at the end of 2024, Mineral Resources (MinRes) has been hard at work finding new homes for its workers.
MinRes first broke the news in June 2024 that continuing Yilgarn wouldn’t be viable. With the official closure date passing on December 31, just 45 workers remained on site to carry out care and maintenance activities.
Yilgarn Hub, which includes the Koolyanobbing, Parker Range, Carina and Windarling mines, had an annual capacity of up to eight million tonnes of ore per year, which was transported by rail and exported through the Port of Esperance.
In its second quarter report for the 2024–25 financial year (Q2 FY25), MinRes revealed how it had scaled down production to 0.9 million wet metric tonnes, with shipments of 1.1 million wet metric tonnes.
The average realised iron ore price for the quarter was $US87 per dry metric tonne ($139), eight per cent higher compared to the previous quarter.
Over the quarter, MinRes worked to find new employment for its Yilgarn workers, which totalled over 1000 people at the height of operations.
As of today, MinRes has managed to redeploy over 780 workers to other roles within the company’s portfolio, including the company’s $3 billion Onslow Iron project.
Onslow Iron is one of the largest iron ore projects currently under development in Australia, set to unlock billions of tonnes of stranded deposits in the west Pilbara region.
The project is ramping up to 35 million tonnes per year, with an expected mine life of more than 30 years, making it the perfect place for Yilgarn Hub’s pool of talent.
Currently, MinRes is looking at sale options for the Yilgarn assets, though it is unconfirmed whether the mines will be sold as one package or divvied up between prospective buyers.
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