On Oct. 28th, 2016, under the witness of the government representative of Queensland State, Australia, Jiang Jiqing who is in charge of the Economic and Commercial Office of Consulate-General of China in Brisbane, community resident representative, and all the board members and shareholder representative of CUDECO, the CUDECO  ROCKLANDS Copper Mine is put into official operation. Sinosteel MECC started to cooperate with CUDECO, a listed company in Australia since the year 2010. Regarding the 3,000,000t/a Beneficiation Project of ROCKLANDS Copper Mine, a series of contracts have been signed between both Parties, including basic design contract, detail design contract, equipment and steel structure supply contract, equipment installation contract, diesel power plant contract, pipeline supply contract, electrical installation and production commissioning service contract and etc., and the sum of the contracts is approximately 300,000,000 Australian dollars.

Chinese design and equipment were adopted in this project, so as to ultimately reduce project cost. The smooth execution of the project graced the cooperation between China and Australia in mining and provided basis for the development of Sinosteel MECC in mining of Australia.

CUDECO Copper Mine is located in the northwest of Queensland State, Australia, 11km away from CLONCURRY Town, and 780km away from TOWNSVILLE, a port city in the east. Infrastructure is well furnished around the mine.

Since high-grade native copper, cobalt (coexist with pyrite) and magnet iron exist in the green ore of CUDECO Copper Mine, the process flow “crushing - high pressure roller grinding - washing screening – jigging - spiral chute - shaking table - ball milling – floatation - regrinding (vertical grinding) - press filtration” was adopted for beneficiation. The design was carried out strictly according to the industrial standards of Australia and the mine laws of Queensland State. Under the precondition of meeting technical requirement, Chinese equipment was adopted as far as possible, and a lot of Chinese equipment was used. This is the first time in the large-scale beneficiation history of Australia. Meanwhile, hundreds of mantimes of Chinese technical team were sent to the site for cooperation with local Australian construction team in terms of technical support, instruction and test run service. This is the first complete EPC project of Sinosteel MECC in Australia.

For engineering design, basing on China Nerin Engineering Co., Ltd., Sinosteel MECC organized WPC, an international engineering design company and senior Australian engineers for design review and optimization. 3D design was developed for this project, and the philosophy of modularization and preassembly was adopted for the design of steel structures and pipelines, which effectively reduced the difficulty and cost of site construction while meeting the high requirement of Australian construction on design.

For equipment supply, basing on Chinese equipment manufacturing resources, world-class beneficiation equipment was supplied for CUDECO Copper Mine. Key equipment such as ball mills, floatation machines, vibrating screens, press filters and etc. were all supplied by Chinese manufacturers. For equipment supplied by internationally famous manufactures, e.g. SIEMENS, OUTOTEC and etc., the equipment manufacturing must have been done in China. For the whole project, around 15,000t equipment and materials were used, and more than 95% of them were manufactured in China, which helped tens of Chinese manufactures landed Australian mining market.

For construction, as the EPC contractor, Sinosteel MECC carried out cooperation with local Australian companies actively and strictly observe Australian mining regulations in respect to health, safety, environmental protection, labor, quality acceptance and etc. In the past three years, hundreds of managing staff and technical workers from Australia and New Zealand have been organized for site service, and a lot of jobs were created for local residents in this way. Meanwhile, the management advantages of Sinosteel MECC as an international engineering company were brought into full play, and the project construction was completed efficiently with low cost and high quality.

For project commissioning, a joint team was organized between Chinese technical experts and Australian experts. With the experience advantage of Chinese commissioning experts, single equipment commissioning, no-load test, load test and etc. were completed in less than 6 months, which achieved rapid transition from project construction to project operation.

Sinosteel MECC will continue to seek high quality resources projects in Australia, and provide EPC engineering service as well as investment and financing support, so as to achieve win-win development. We believe, under the guidance of the project mode of CUDECO Copper Mine, Sinosteel MECC will service the mining clients in Australia and the world more widely.

Consulate-General Jiang Jiqing and Sinosteel project team at site

general layout (design)

general layout (aerial photo)