Iron ore handling procedures enhance export quality

Iron ore is a major Australian export into a highly competitive market. Customers feed the iron ore into blast furnaces that are tuned to ore of particular composition. They are therefore displeased if successive shipments differ in their percentage content of any element, such as iron, phosphorus, silicon, aluminium, or calcium. Producers need low variability to compete against other Australian suppliers or other sources, such as South Africa or Brazil. They can plan mine production to average a desired composition over a year, but in mining through an actual ore body, short-term fluctuations in composition are inevitable. The paper showed through simulation studies that producers can reduce this fluctuation in composition by stacking and recovering the iron ore intelligently at the port prior to shipment. Two Western Australian producers have used these studies to improve measurably the quality of their exported ore.