The private Pilbara haulage road used by Mineral Resources (MinRes) to transport its iron ore 150km from its Ken’s Bore mine to Port of Ashburton has reopened after a temporary closure.
There have been six reported truck accidents on the busy route since last August, the latest just last week when the rear two trailers of a 330-tonne triple road rolled close to the company’s Ken’s Bore mine in the Pilbara. The driver was uninjured.
Two days later, after receiving a notice from WorkSafe WA regarding “controls and risk-mitigation of the road train operations”, MinRes briefly paused haulage.
Operations kicked off again on Monday after “constructive discussions with WorkSafe WA”, the company told shareholders.
MinRes did not respond to a request for further comment on what safety changes may have been made.
In June last year, MinRes announced it had sold a 49 per cent share in the road to Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners for $1.3 billion.
MinRes’ Managing Director, Chris Ellison, said the road was “quite exceptional” and the company called it one of the most technologically advanced pieces of transport infrastructure in Australia, but drivers operating on the road quickly noticed that it was crumbling.
Investors were told just last month that MinRes would have to spend $230 million to repair and resurface it, a spend Ellison blamed on cyclone season damage.
According to a report in Big Rigs last year, the road would also be equipped with fibre optic cabling to support the operation of MinRes’ autonomous C509 road trains.
The autonomous prime movers are being progressively fitted out with autonomous technology by autonomy specialist Hexagon.
At the time, MinRes said this autonomous solution unlocks stranded iron ore deposits in the West Pilbara region of Western Australia.