Project details
The Harts Range Abrasives Project is planned to be Olympia Resources first mining operation with mining to commence in 2008.
Harts Range is located 130km northeast of Alice Springs in Australia's Northern Territory. The Project is based on resources of industrial garnet and alumino magnesio hornblende (AMH) in sand dunes and buried alluvial river sands of the Plenty River floodplain, and Aturga, Plenty and Ongeva Creek channels.
The proven and probable reserves at Harts Range are approximately 2.3 million tonnes of recoverable garnet and approximately 6.2 million tonnes of recoverable AMH. This makes the Harts Range deposit one of the largest abrasive deposits in the world.
AMH, although lower in hardness and SG than garnet, when mixed with a proportion of garnet produces results similar to garnet in applications such as blast cleaning. Olympia intends to sell AMH in a product called Garnetblende consisting of approximately 80% AMH and 20% garnet.
The Harts Range alluvial deposits have the potential to produce the whole spectrum of fine, medium and coarse-grained garnet and Garnetblende products. The range of grain sizes gives Olympia the potential to access the high volume blast cleaning markets with medium sized product as well as the niche water filtration and water jet cutting markets with coarse and fine products respectively. A key feature of the resource is the high level of coarse garnet, which is in strong demand as an industrial abrasive, attracting premium prices.
Within Australia, Harts Range is well situated to supply abrasives into the Northern Territory, South Australia, Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales.
Internationally, Harts Range's proximity to South East Asia makes it well placed to service the Singaporean, Malaysian and Indonesian markets as well as China, Japan and Korea. Singapore has some of the largest dry-dock shipyards in the world and the associated blast cleaning industry currently uses copper-slag, but is moving toward more environmentally friendly abrasives such as garnet and Garnetblende.
Strategic alliances with shipping companies provide Olympia with excellent distribution opportunities in Asia.
An Indigenous land Use Agreement (ILUA) has been negotiated with the traditional owners and the Central Land Council (CLC). Heritage clearances have been undertaken on the proposed mine site and environmental approval has been gained A mining licence has been issued by the Northern Territory Government.
The Harts Range deposit is world class resource large enough to support a 50 year mining operation producing 100,000 tpy of garnet.
Construction is planned to commence in 2008 with the first shipments six months later. The project is 90% owned by Olympia Resources.
Last Update: 23-Nov-07
