Woornack rownack pirro

Iluka Resources commenced mineral sands production at the Woornack, Rowneck, Pirro (WRP) mining operation in early 2012, a full twenty days ahead of schedule after equipment from the mined out Kulwin operation arrived at the new mine site near Ouyen in north west Victoria's Murray Basin.

WRP Mineral Sands Mining Project is an Important Source of Rutile
The new mining operation is expected to have a mine life of three and a half years that may be extended if further reserves are proven feasible. The WRP sand mining operation is an important source of rutile for Iluka that is the world's largest producer of the mineral. Rutile is a titanium dioxide product that is highly sought after and as such escaped much of the downturn of demand caused to other minerals because of the Eurozone debt crisis of recent years. The mine is currently operating at 100 percent production capacity.

WRP Owner Iluka is the World's Leading Producer of Rutile
Iluka Resources has mineral sands operations, project development and exploration interests in Australia and the United States, it is the world leader in the production of synthetic rutile as well high grade titanium dioxide products.

Mining Operation at WRP Contracted out to Watpac
Iluka operate the processing plant at the Woornack, Rowneck, Pirro (WRP) project but have contracted out the mining operation to Watpac. Watpac is currently mining two pits at the WRP Ouyen mine site with the use of conventional trucks, tractor scoops, scrapers and excavators. The mobile plant is currently mining the topsoil, subsoil, overburden and orebody at the WRP mine site at the rate of one million bank cubic metre (BCM) a month.

WRP Mine is 25 Kilometres From Ouyen
The WRP sand mining operation consists of three parallel mineral deposits; Woornack, Rowneck and Pirro located about 25 kilometres from the Ouyen township. The project is one of many mineral sands deposits Iluka has, or plans, to mine in the future, in the Murray Basin Region. The Kulwin deposit was the first of the northern Murray Basin deposits to be mined by the company. It was depleted in early 2012 when Iluka transferred its infrastructure to the new WRP mine site.

Production Began at the WRP Mine in 2012
The first heavy mineral concentrate was produced at the WRP mine in May 2012. The mine employs around 70 Iluka personnel and 113 contractors. The mine site at WRP stretches over a distance of 14.5 kilometres with various deposits having a width of up to 130 metres. The deposit has a depth from six metres to three metres with an average overburden depth of around 30 metres. Dewatering has to be employed where the ore dips below the water table.

Mined ore is fed into the processing plant to rid it of any oversized material after which it is pumped into a thickener to remove the clays and slimes. This slurried ore is then pumped into the wet concentrator to processes it into heavy mineral concentrate. The concentrate is transported to Iluka's mineral separation plant at Hamilton via truck transport to Hopetoun where it is loaded onto railway wagons to be taken by rail the rest of the distance to Hamilton.

WRP Concentrate Taken to Hamilton Plant to Have Minerals Separated
Thirty trucks a day carry 50 tonnes of concentrate each from the mine-site to the specially constructed Hopetoun rail loading facility for loading onto trains pulling 15 wagons at a time, seven days a week, loaded with 1,450 tonnes of concentrate at the one time. These railway wagons take the concentrate to the Hamilton mineral separation plant. Once the heavy mineral concentrate arrives at the Hamilton plant it is separated into ilmenite, zircon and rutile.

WRP mine workers are housed in an 185 personnel accommodation village that has been built at Ouyen while employed on the Woornack, Rownack, Pirro mineral sands mining project.
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