When Olympia Resources realised the quantity and quality of its resource in the Northern Territory last year, it moved quickly to advance plans for the world’s only Australian-owned garnet operation.
"We realised we could be in the stratosphere of the world garnet market," Olympia managing director Alan Lockett said.
But real certainty for the company and its potential customers and financiers demanded guaranteed access to mine the resource.
Hence this week’s signing of an indigenous land use agreement for the 1,000 square kilometres of Olympia’s Harts Range holdings is more than timely.
The agreement has been finalised just weeks before Olympia presents its project plans at the World Industrial Minerals Conference in Montreal, and concludes a feasibility study.
Olympia is also finalising an application for a Northern Territory mining lease this week, and market samples will soon be on their way to interested parties.
The company is expecting a rail freight proposal within a few weeks, and already has strong interest from road haulers.
Olympia began discussions with the Central Land Council two years ago, but the final settling of terms took just a few weeks, Deacons senior associate Marcus Holmes said.
The CLC, which represented an unnamed group of claimants for the project territory 170 kilometres north-east of Alice Springs, signed off last week, and Olympia is signing in Peth this week.
Olympia decided it wanted certainty on everything upfront, Mr Holmes said, and has negotiated to have environ-mental and heritage contingencies covered, and to include the core terms for a mining agreement to cover other minerals in addition to garnet.
"The company can now plan everything for the future," Mr Holmes said.
The agreement, which also binds any future claimants for the region, includes an undertaking that the CLC and claimants will not lodge any objections to Olympia tenements.
It also provides for regular meetings between Olympia and the CLC, with the first of these to be funded by the land council.
Olympia’s agreement, which is headed for registration with the Native Title Tribunal, is one of a just a handful finalised in the Northern Territory, Mr Lockett said.
However, such agreements were typical of the way things were moving in the NT, Mr Holmes said.
The NT has had Aboriginal land rights legislation since 1974, and explorers and miners know the likelihood of the existence of native title is comparatively high, he said.
But with registered native title claims across Australia, agreements continue to be the best way to progress any mining project, Mr Holmes said.
Olympia’s NT mine site construction could commence in the third quarter this year, Mr Lockett said, and first production by the end of the first quarter 2004.
The company is planning to produce up to 60,000 tonnes of garnet product in its first year of operation, and up to 100,000 tonnes annually within five years.
"We have a large enough resource to last us for between 40 and 50 years," Mr Lockett said.
Olympia is headed for administrative expansion, with plans to also commence mineral sands production in the southwest of WA next year.
Olympia withdrew from a proposed ASX listing last year, but Mr Lockett is now adamant about no further such plans in the near future.
"At the moment we have no need to list".
