Albany port expansion review underway

Grange Resources Ltd has announced another milestone in the company’s....

  Grange Resources Ltd has announced another milestone in the company’s proposed development plans for the Southdown Magnetite Project near Albany, Western Australia.Grange has been advised that the Albany Port Expansion Proposal component of the project has progressed to the public environmental review period. The proponent for this part of the approvals process is the Albany Port Authority (APA) The Environmental Protection Authority has advised APA that it will advertise the Public Environmental Review (PER) document for public comment on Monday 24 September 2007. The public comment phase will run for a fixed eight-week period with members of the community invited to make submissions by 19 November 2007. Grange Managing Director Geoff Wedlock said that the release of this document will mark another important milestone in the Southdown Magnetite Project development. “The release of the Albany Port PER follows the release of the mine and pipeline PER in February 2007. All aspects of the project are now within the formal assessment phase of the Government approvals process.” Mr Wedlock said. “With the formal assessment processes for both aspects of the project now underway we can expect environmental approvals to proceed with the project from around the middle of 2008.” The Southdown Magnetite Project involves mining and processing magnetite (iron ore) and then transporting the processed magnetite via an underground slurry pipeline to Albany Port for shipping to the Kemaman Pellet Plant in Malaysia. Environmental Approval for the Kemaman pellet plant was granted in November 2006 by the Malaysian Department of Environment. The plant will be owned by Grange and its Joint Venture partner. In June 2007 Grange entered into a Joint Venture Implementation Agreement with Sojitz Corporation whereby Sojitz has agreed to take a 30% joint venture interest in the Southdown Magnetite and Kemaman Pellet Plant Project.