Monadelphous Wins $260 Million Contract for Rio Tinto's Pilbara Projects

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Perth, Australia)--Monadelphous Group Limited (ASX:MND) has been awarded a $260 million contract by Rio Tinto Limited (NYSE:RIO) for its iron ore projects in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The contract is for supplying and installing structural, mechanical, piping, electrical and instrumentation works on Rio's Brockman 4 and Western Turner Syncline (stage I and II) expansion projects, located about 20 kilometres from the industrial town of Tom Price. The contract is scheduled to be completed by December 2013.

These two separate expansion projects have been progressed simultaneously and are managed by the same project team at Rio Tinto. Monadelphous has been chosen over one of its competitors Leighton Contractors (Sydney, New South Wales), which was involved during the early site works.

The scope of work at Brockman 4 involves the expansion of mining activity by accessing new resources and increasing the current processing plant throughput from 22 million tons per year to an estimated 40 million tons per year. It also involves a construction of a 4-kilometre conveyor system to connect the new resources to the processing facility.

The Western Turner Syncline expansion has been divided into two stages, wherein Stage I will involve accessing new resources and increasing the current processing throughput from 6 million tons to 15 million tons per year by installing a new primary crushing circuit, as well as the construction of a 20-kilometre conveyor system.

Stage II of Western Turner will see a development of a new open pit mine approximately 15 kilometres west of Western Turner and a primary crushing circuit designed to produce 13 million tons per year of iron ore. It also will see the construction of another 15-kilometre conveyor system for the ore to be processes at the existing Tom Price facility. Second-stage development is still at least three years away from construction, and the decision to take it up will depend on the global iron ore market situation.

Calibre Global Limited (Perth, Australia) has been employed as an engineering, procurement and construction contractor for these projects and is currently performing the feasibility study for the Western Turner Stage II development.

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