Hawsons Iron’s flagship project revolved around a proposed 100 million tonnes per annum operation. They reached out to our team to progress the effort from a scoping study to a comprehensive prefeasibility study (PFS), helping position the project for future development and investment.
Working closely with Hawsons Iron, we developed a revised process design to reduce capital cost. The process now centres on dry grinding and magnetic separation—an approach that significantly reduces water consumption in a water-constrained region. It’s also now complemented by a targeted wet circuit to further upgrade the dry-circuit product to achieve an export-grade magnetite concentrate. Additionally, the novel dry processing approach achieves considerable reductions in energy and reagents consumption and allows a dry tailings product that avoids the requirement for management of a traditional wet tailings facility.
Our team provided multidisciplinary engineering across process, mechanical, structural, civil, and electrical design for the process plant. By integrating updated metallurgical test work and refining capital and operating cost estimates to Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (AusIMM) Level 4 accuracy, we provided a technically robust and costed processing solution to support Hawsons Iron’s decision-making and the overall PFS commercial model.
Completed in late 2025 and released to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), the PFS represents a key milestone for the Hawsons Iron Project. It supports the development of a large-scale, long-life magnetite operation designed to supply high-grade concentrate to global steelmakers and contribute to lower-emissions steel production.
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