The wait is over as Rex hits road

Rachel Hagan, Yorke Peninsula Country Times

Rex Minerals is about to begin construction on the preliminary stages of the Pine Point Road realignment in preparation for full scale copper and gold production at the Hillside Project.

The first stage of the road realignment is due to be completed by Easter, with works set to be temporarily halted during the busy summer holiday period.

Rex Minerals chief operating officer Jason Schell said it would take just over two years to realign the road around the site, which included moving the Minlaton turn off south to near Pine Point.

Onsite construction began in December 2022, and this year further power and water services will be installed.

Some mining has already started, and Mr Schell said there would be further drilling this year.

“It’s fantastic to continue that whole construction period,” Mr Schell said.

“It will allow us to close the Yorke Highway through the open pit and then the bulk earthworks to then commence for the mine.”

The next stages of the roadworks will include a realignment of the coastal section of St Vincent Highway to ensure it is excluded from the blast zone and upgrades to sections of Sandy Church and Pine Point Roads.

Hillside Project set to launch

Rex Minerals’ Hillside Mine is set to become one of the largest copper projects in Australia, which will help relieve what some have been calling the “copper crisis”.

In 2023, the State Government declared copper a critical mineral for the state and for all other economies who seek to decarbonise.

The government’s Critical Minerals Strategy features copper because it is essential for new technology — especially technology associated with electrification, such as electric vehicles.

The Hillside site is just north of Pine Point and 12 kilometres south of Ardrossan.

Hillside contains close to two million tonnes of copper and about 46,000 kilograms of gold, which has a combined estimated value of $847 million.

The copper will be mined using largescale rigid trucks loaded by an excavator in an open pit.

The minerals will then be trucked by road and shipped to market from Port Adelaide.

Stage One of mining is set to include 11 years of extraction, and Stage Two could be approved by the fifth year of operation, which could extend the mine life to up to 20 years.

During Stage One only 51 per cent of the ore reserve and 26 per cent of the mineral resource will be exploited.

More than 2000 expressions of interest have been received for potential jobs at the project.

And most of the water used in the processing work will be sourced from local saline bores, with more water being supplied by SA Water.

Where will the workers stay?

Ardrossan and the surrounding areas will soon be a home away from home for about 100 workers during the road realignment and site activities at the Hillside Mine.

Rex Minerals chief operating officer Jason Schell said they planned to use local accommodation for the first stage, such as pubs and caravan parks, which would also give a boost to the local economy.

“After that, at the peak of construction, we will put a tender out for a temporary workers’ accommodation to look after up to 450 people,” Mr Schell said.

“And then that will be demobilised and we will be back to our residential workforce.”

Rex has big plans to prioritise local jobs, and has already begun training interested students through its school immersion program.

“We’ve recently been to eight schools across the Yorke Peninsula talking to year 10, 11 and 12 students about the career industry pathway,” he said.

“And those 200 students will also have the ability to come to the mine site and the Ardrossan Area School later in the year where we’ll have up to 15 exhibitors of what it involves, working in the construction and mining industry.”

Each year, Rex sponsors two student scholarships with up to $10,000 to go towards further study, and holds paid vacation work opportunities for eight to 10 weeks.

“It’s just a fantastic way to understand what your future opportunities may look like before you actually go in there,” Mr Schell said.

Year 12 Ardrossan Area School student Jake Clifford plans to spend a chunk of his summer break between high school and university completing vacation work at Hillside.

“They (Rex) were offering to get me into that sort of career path and I was pretty keen for that,” Jake said.

Jake is eager to study geology next year at Flinders University, but has been fortunate enough to have already gained some firsthand experience in field work while in high school.

He said being out in the field was hard work, but he definitely enjoyed every bit of it, especially collaborating with university students who were able to educate him about what was to come.

“We did some soil sampling across the summer, digging small holes and using XRF guns to get the ratings of copper out of the ground,” he said.

“It’s pretty much like an Xray gun that shoots through the samples and tells us the concentrations of the different metals.

“Then we can use that to target copper anomalies underground.”

AAS principal Margaret Roads said the immersion activities were important and had made a difference in students’ lives.

“We’re doing that for a variety of different industries and pathways, so students know what’s out there because you don’t know what you don’t know,” Ms Roads said.

This article appeared in the Yorke Peninsula Country Times, 2 July 2024.