The new Chinese owners of manganese miner Consolidated Minerals will employ 300 personnel for the restart of operations at the mothballed Woodie Woodie mine in the Pilbara.
The new Chinese owners of manganese miner Consolidated Minerals will employ 300 personnel for the restart of operations at the mothballed Woodie Woodie mine in the Pilbara.
Ningxia Tianyuan Manganese Industry Co – a large China-based electrolytic manganese metals producer - took control of the Woodie Woodie mine in May after wrapping up its acquisition of the operation’s owner, ConsMin.
ConsMin is based in Jersey, but operates in Australia out of its West Perth office.
The acquisition was initiated in November last year, nine months after ConsMin put Woodie Woodie on care and maintenance in the wake of depressed manganese prices.
The closure of the mine put 330 direct ConsMin employees out of work, along with 50 contractors.
But ConsMin chief executive Oleg Sheyko told Business News today the company would spend $30 million to bring the mine back into production, with 115 people already employed for initial site work and plans to hire a further 185 personnel being made.
The company is targeting a full restart of operations by October, with first shipments to be made in November.
Mr Sheyko said the $30 million to restart Woodie Woodie was an initial investment, and plans were in the pipeline for further investment in the operation once the company had found the skilled labour it needs.
“We will be very much focused on an exploration program next year, so we will need to secure good geologists for Woodie Woodie,” he said.
“We are looking for the right people to help us to design the exploration program.
“We have lots of materials in our dataroom, but you can’t have a program without having the people. So once that’s sorted we will review our investment plans.”
Mr Sheyko said it was a tough decision to close Woodie Woodie last year, but at that point in time it was unviable.
“We are now confident in the manganese market outlook and with an exploration investment can see Woodie Woodie continuing into the future,” he said.
Mr Sheyko said the company was targeting annual production of up to 1.5 million tonnes of final product.
ConsMin was formerly owned by Ukranian billionaire Gennadiy Bogolyubov, who acquired the business in 2007 after beating two rival bidders with a $902 million all-cash deal.
