Mid West Rail and Oakajee Port Project
Yilgarn's estimated $3 billion Mid West Regional Rail and Oakajee Port project comprises the construction of about 630km of railway and a new deepwater port at Oakajee, some 25km north of Geraldton.
The rail will extend north from Oakajee through a hub at Mullewa to Jack Hills and Weld Range and south through Mullewa to Karara. The railway will be aligned to service multiple iron ore mine customers.
Yilgarn will operate the infrastructure on an independent,
open-access, open-book, multi-user basis, a model designed to
ensure the infrastructure access problems of the Pilbara are not
repeated in the Mid West.
The company has signed foundation customer agreements with Midwest Corporation and other Mid West mines and is one of two partiicpants in the WA Government's tender process for the Oakajee Port. The tender response was submitted on May 9, 2008.
Project work on the rail and port is well advanced, with engineering pre-feasibility complete and key environmental investigations and specialised geotechnical, rail alignment and vessel handling studies finalised. Yilgarn is now undertaking definitive feasibility studies with strong Australian and Chinese engineering teams well equipped to handle this extremely complex development.
Yilgarn has successfully negotiated financial backing with Australian investment combined with equity and debt funding from Chinese infrastructure companies and banks.
The advanced state of the project work and the strength of the company's financial support has Yilgarn well placed for commissioning of the infrastructure by 2011, subject to the State Government's process and approvals.