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New Zealand : BLUESCOPE to invest $50 million in NZ SITE
Publish Date : 03-Jan-2014
BlueScope will invest another $50 million in its iron sands operation in New Zealand. The Port Kembla steelmaker will add another ship to its operations there, adding a further 1.3 million tonnes to the export capacity at the Taharoa site.
BlueScope will charter the 175,000 tonne capacity slurry loading ship, and will invest the money on mining, processing and ship loading equipment. The Taharoa site is on the west coast of New Zealand's North Island, south-west of Hamilton.
By extracting the iron ore from its own sand mining operation, BlueScope can gain some freedom from relying on costlier iron ore from Western Australia.
BlueScope chief executive Paul O'Malley said the expansion at Taharoa will earn export dollars for the firm and will provide low-cost iron ore for its New Zealand steelmaking operations.
BlueScope's New Zealand operations made up 8 per cent of the company's revenue last year at $681 million. BlueScope will hire more workers at Taharoa while the expansion. The Taharoa site's Maori owners lease the land to Bluescope.
BlueScope said it had good grounds to believe there was enough of the resource there to sustain another 15 years of extraction, at 4 million tonnes per year. It is one of two sites where BlueScope extracts iron sand in New Zealand, along with the Waikato North Head mine. BlueScope also manages the Glenbrook steel mill south of Auckland.
