minres plans port facility, incl 3rd parties

There would be some irony if the company that beat them to the Fremantle port allocation turned out to be their savior!

From http://www.businessnews.com.au/

Date 13/02/2014
By Mark Beyer
After announcing strong growth in interim profit, managing director Chris Ellison said today he expected the infrastructure plans to be implemented in the "very near future".
“My main focus, and where I want to take the business over the next couple of year, is two areas: one is transhipment, and the second is transport to the coast, either by private haul roads or a railway system,” Mr Ellison said today.
“We believe we have got an opportunity to do both of those. We want to start making something happen in that area quite soon.”
MinRes currently exports iron ore through the Utah Point berth at Port Hedland and the Kwinana Bulk Terminal in Cockburn Sound.
Mr Ellison said a transhipping facility, similar to what has been introduced in South Australia, would lead to a substantial reduction in costs and remove the cap on export volumes at the government ports.
“We need to connect with a rail solution or private haul road or both, and we believe we are going to achieve that in the very near future,” he said.
MinRes is targeting iron ore exports of 8 million tonnes in the current financial year but Mr Ellison envisages the new facilities would also export iron ore for junior miners.
“We will be looking to bring multi-users onto those facilities,” he said.
“We also want to share in the prize of getting iron ore into China at a very low cost.”
The company’s ambitious plans could provide an infrastructure solution for aspiring iron ore miners in the Yilgarn, which may see transhipping through Kwinana as an alternative to the long-awaited private development of new export facilities at Esperance.
MinRes already operates the Carina mine in the Yilgarn and is buying new rolling stock to support its operations