Junior miner Eastern Iron has announced plans to continue preparation work on a prospective iron ore mine located near the NSW/VIC border.
In a statement the company said it would advance the Nowa Nowa iron project to the feasibility stage after a positive scoping study and metallurgical testwork.
The project is designed to take advantage of the Five Mile deposit, which contains an estimated 8.92 million tonnes of mostly iron magnetite, with hematite becoming more common at greater depths.
The company said if the Nowa Nowa project went ahead a contractor would be used to mine ore at around one million tonnes a year.
“Iron ore product would be loaded into standard B-double road haulage trucks at the mine site and trucked to a port on the south side of Two Fold Bay, south of Eden, for loading,” the company said.
During the feasibility study Eastern Iron will explore a number of new methods to increase production and quality.
Already the company has flagged investigating low cost improvements to beneficiation and iron recovery.
Eastern Iron said the next steps for the project would include investigating extensions to the current resource, taking out further metallurgical testwork, and providing data for the mine design.