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Queensland Department of Mines & Energy map showing current EPM’s, MDL’s & ML’s, in vicinity of Whispering Ridge & Sunday Creek

The “under-used” Mourilyan Harbour is already well established and available to move some 1Mtpa of iron ore in 40/45000 DWT vessels. The opportunity is available to also commence feasibility studies to extend the present wharf, as is done at Abbot Point, for larger tonnage vessels.

Three of the world’s largest smelters and refineries are located near Townsville being:-

YABULU NICKEL REFINERY

Queensland Nickel operates the Yabulu Refinery which is located 25 kilometers north-west of Townsville.

The Refinery processes nickel and cobalt-bearing laterite ores purchased from third party mines in New Caledonia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Nickel ore is dried, ground, roasted and leached in an ammonia solution to extract the nickel and cobalt in the processing plant. Nickel and cobalt are separated and further refined in the metal refining area, to produce products for sale in the global market.

Annual Nickel production of approximately 35,000 tones.

TOWNSVILLE ZINC REFINERY

The refinery was built by Sun Metals Corporation Pty Ltd, the Australian subsidiary of Korea Zinc Company Limited which produces 10 per cent of the world's zinc from plants in Korea, the USA and Australia.

The refinery consumes more than 400,000 tones of zinc concentrates each year, sourced from North West Queensland and other zinc mining areas in Australia and overseas. These concentrates are converted into approximately 200,000 tones of value-added zinc metal, mainly for export, which is considerably higher than the plant’s nominal production capacity of 170,000 tones of zinc. An important by-product is more than 360,000 tones of sulphuric acid which is mainly used in Queensland to produce high quality agricultural fertilizers.

TOWNSVILLE COPPER REFINERY

Operated by Xstrata Copper Australia.

The company’s Townsville copper refinery is one of the world’s leading electrolytic copper refineries producing copper cathode from copper anode produced at the Mount Isa smelter. The refinery uses the company’s ISA PROCESS technology producing approximately 300,000 tones of copper cathode per year.

TOWNSVILLE PORT

The Port of Townsville handles around 10 million tones of diverse cargo annually and is well connected to the internationally recognized North West Mineral Province and surrounding agricultural industries.

The port is situated in the heart of tropical North Queensland (1,359 kilometers north of Brisbane, Queensland's capital city) and provides Australia and its international business partners with a world class gateway for commerce and trade.

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Below is a general overview of the area from Cairns through to Townsville to assist in your evaluation of logistics and infrastructure requirements.

The Sunday Creek Mineral Prospects have many similarities to the earlier major Magnetite, Gold & Copper “Tennant Creek style” mineralization at the Northern Territory of Australia. The opportunity to commercially mine gold and copper associated with the magnetite means the gold, copper and other steel making materials maybe value-added by-products to the iron. This is also comparable to the Ernest Henry  mine plan, located near Mt Isa in Queensland, where Xstrata recently advised that the gold and magnetite to be underground mined with a major hoisting shaft to be sunk to a depth of 1000 meters provided value-added by-products to the copper.  They also sought approval for the Ernest Henry project to export some 1.5Mtpa of magnetite through the port of Townsville in North Queensland. Mt Moss Mine started the export of 50,000t individual shipments of iron ore late last year out of Townsville and is supplying mills in China.

There are major exploration and mining developments in this area as seen below:-