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Mines/Australia

Hamersley Mines - Paraburdoo

Hamersley Mines - Paraburdoo, Australia. Producing, open pit, mining iron ore since 1974.

Why Hamersley Mines - Paraburdoo is famous

Paraburdoo began operating in 1974, after Mount Tom Price (1966), on a lease under the Iron Ore (Hamersley Range) Agreement Act 1968. Rio Tinto and China Baowu opened the Western Range mine, its 18th Pilbara iron ore mine, on 6 June 2025. It is tied to the Paraburdoo hub by an 18 km conveyor and has a capacity of up to 25 Mt a year.1,2

Story cards

What kind of deposit

Banded iron formation (Superior and Algoma types)

Hamersley Mines - Paraburdoo today

Where iron ore is mined todayMining in Australia

Where next

Mines

Led toHamersley Mines - Mount Tom PriceParaburdoo opened in 1974, after Mount Tom Price in 1966.1

Places

Located inParaburdooHamersley Mines - Paraburdoo is about 8 km from Paraburdoo.1

Deposit types

An example ofBanded iron formation (Superior and Algoma types)Hamersley Mines - Paraburdoo belongs to the banded iron formation family of deposits.3

Sources

  1. Annual Report on Form 20-F for 2025 Rio Tinto plc (SEC)
  2. data/minerals/operations.csv (modern operations table) prospectortrails.com internal data
  3. Mineral Deposit Models (Bulletin 1693, Cox and Singer, eds., 1986) US Geological Survey

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

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Stories with these minerals

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Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Autonomous trucks by RobSimmons223311, CC BY-SA 4.0; Conveyors, rail and ports by Kabelleger / David Gubler, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pictures: Kirunavaara gruva, Kiruna., Fotograf okänd, / Europeana (Public Domain Mark 1.0).