The opening of South Australia’s newest copper–gold mine, Carrapateena, celebrated the strength of the enduring partnerships which connect the state’s vibrant copper sector to the world.

The mine’s August 2020 launch confirmed Carrapateena’s place as a creator of wealth and employment, with copper supplies shipped to countries across the globe.

The Premier of South Australia, Steven Marshall, congratulated OZ Minerals and partners for their dedication, innovation and teamwork to see an incredible achievement to construct a mine of immense scale and magnitude that begins with a 20-year mine life.

A celebratory moment for 2020 – cutting the ribbon to officially open Carrapateena are Dan van Holst Pellekaan (Minister for Energy and Mining), Steven Marshall (Premier of South Australia), Myles Johnston (General Manager of Carrapateena) and Andrew Cole (CE of OZ Minerals). (Photo 418282)

‘This is a proud day for the state,’ the Premier said.

‘Sitting behind the success of Carrapateena, is the long-standing support of the traditional owners – the Kokatha peoples, South Australia’s pastoral industry, the supply chain from the Upper Spencer Gulf towns integral to the mine’s construction and community spirit.

The mine comes at an exciting time with the world’s clean energy revolution which needs copper resources.

The Premier also highlighted the role of copper in modern society, enabling countries to be connected in their communications, become more carbon neutral by growing their renewable energy industries, and to scale up electrical mobility.

‘Opening a new mine in any year is an achievement but throw in the constraints imposed in combating the COVID-19 pandemic and that achievement is all the more remarkable,’ he said.

More than a mine

The mine’s creation on Pernatty Station and the land of the Kokatha people, 160 km north of Port Augusta, has been a major exercise involving a capital investment of $1 billion.

Following acquisition of Carrapateena in 2011, OZ Minerals worked deftly to scale up the resource and work through various models to develop the project with agility and optionality, embedding partnerships with the traditional owners and local community.

Construction across the super-site has produced new energy transmission infrastructure, an airport, a village accommodating 500 remote workers, and services needed to support a new outback community.

Creating a mine of the scale and complexity of Carrapateena, South Australia’s newest copper–gold mine, is a symbol of the opportunities enduring partnerships can create in the state’s outback for the world. (Courtesy of OZ Minerals)

The underground work to reach the ore body and create infrastructure, complete with conveyor belts, has been just as impressive. It has involved construction of dual access underground declines. The main access tunnel, the Tjati decline, follows the ore body to a depth of 600 m. The system is designed to optimise power consumption and ventilation delivery through primary and secondary power systems.

An exciting part of the project under development is a hybrid off-grid renewable power energy demonstration plant to help meet the power needs of the operation and lower emissions.

During an intense three-year construction phase, OZ Minerals worked closely with its lead contractors and the Global Maintenance Upper Spencer Gulf cluster to maximise local participation. The multiplier benefits for local businesses from this partnership was recognised in a Premier’s award in 2018 for demonstrating excellence in working with communities – see MESA Journal News 2019:17.

The mine’s construction required an average workforce of 683 people, peaking to 1,000 with 20 per cent of the workforce linked to the Upper Spencer Gulf.

Given the scale and complexity, the state’s mining regulators at the Department for Energy and Mining, working with their co-regulators, oversaw a comprehensive assessment process for all aspects of the proposal in a diligent manner.

OZ Mineral’s, having shifted its headquarters to Adelaide in 2015, was able to access the majority of its workforce locally. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the ability to adapt rosters proved an important advantage.

Speakers at the ceremony praised OZ Minerals for displaying agility during the commissioning phase of the mine, enabling the company to exceed early production targets in a COVID-safe way, and to ramp up towards a production run rate of 4.5 million tonnes of ore per year by the end of 2020.

First pre-commissioned copper concentrate was produced in December 2019 and first shipments were through the Port of Whyalla in June 2020.

At the mine’s opening, OZ Minerals CE, Andrew Cole, outlined a Life of Province to further unlock the potential of the mine. A prefeasibility study into the Carrapateena block cave expansion, to convert the lower portion of the current sublevel cave to a series of block caves, could more than double annual throughput from 4.25 million tonnes per annum to 10–12 million tonnes per annum from 2026, and further establish Carrapateena as a world-class operation.

As featured in previous articles, Carrapateena was discovered by prospector Rudy Gomez in 2005 – see MESA Journal News 2016:8. Rudy tapped into the Geological Survey of South Australia’s work of decades past and pooled his own funds with the state government’s co-discovery initiative to undertake drilling, intercepting copper.

Just as Carrapateena’s discovery highlights the value in stimulus, the state government’s three-year Accelerated Discovery Initiative seeks to uncover more world-class deposits.

Carrapateena joins OZ Minerals’ other major copper–gold mine, Prominent Hill, in the Gawler Craton, showing the opportunities that exist in this prospective region of the state.

– Grace Taylor and Michael Smith, October 2020

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