Mining giant Mineral Resources will close its iron ore operations in Western Australia’s Goldfields region, with around 1,000 workers losing their jobs.
Billionaire MinRes founder Chris Ellison said the Yilgarn hub, which consists of about five mines east of Perth, would not be financially viable from next year.
In addition to site workers, the closure of the Yilgarn centre, opened 13 years ago, is expected to affect contractors and suppliers generally.
Ellison said this week that MinRes, worth around $12 billion, expects to ship 4 million tonnes of iron ore from Yilgarn over the next six months and will then put the sites into rehabilitation from 2025.
Ellison said in an ASX statement that the “prudent” decision was “not taken lightly” and that MinRes would seek to redeploy workers to other mines or processing facilities.
Mining giant Mineral Resources will close its iron ore operations in Western Australia’s Goldfields region, with around 1,000 workers losing their jobs (file image)
He said the decision was based on dwindling resources at current mining sites and the long time it would take to develop new sites in the area.
“With our investment across Western Australia, we have almost 800 vacancies and will redeploy as many of our staff as possible to other MinRes operations, including our long-term, low-cost Onslow Iron project.”
MinRes has been expanding its iron ore projects in the Pilbara region of northern WA, which includes Onslow.
This week, a worker died at the Onslow Iron site in an incident that mining safety authorities are investigating.
As well as site workers, the closure of the 13-year-old Yilgarn center is expected to affect contractors and suppliers generally (file image)
Last month, MinRes sent its first shipment from the Pilbara to Chinese group Baowu, the world’s largest steel producer.
While last week it spent about $72 million to buy Pilbara iron ore assets from Kerry Stokes-backed BCI Minerals.
By June 2025, Onslow is expected to export 35 million tonnes of iron ore a year, dwarfing Yilgarn’s production of around 8 million tonnes a year.
