Drag to turn the globe

Mines/Australia

Koolyanobbing mine

Koolyanobbing mine, Australia. Producing, open pit, mining iron ore.

Why Koolyanobbing is famous

Koolyanobbing is an open-pit iron ore operation in the Yilgarn region, about 50 km north-north-east of Southern Cross in Western Australia. USGS lists Koolyanobbing Central under Portman Ltd with a capacity of 6 Mt a year in 2021. Opening year is not yet sourced.1,2

Story cards

What kind of deposit

Banded iron formation (Superior and Algoma types)

Koolyanobbing today

Where iron ore is mined todayMining in Australia

Where next

Mines

Same kind of depositHamersley Mines - Mount Tom PriceIron ore from the Pilbara's Tom Price to the Yilgarn's Koolyanobbing near Southern Cross.4

Places

Worked hereSouthern CrossKoolyanobbing is about 50 km north-north-east of Southern Cross.1

Deposit types

An example ofBanded iron formation (Superior and Algoma types)Koolyanobbing belongs to the banded iron formation family of deposits.5

Sources

  1. 2020-21 Minerals Yearbook, Australia (advance release) US Geological Survey
  2. data/minerals/operations.csv (modern operations table) prospectortrails.com internal data
  3. The Rush for Gold (WA Goldfields) Western Australian Museum
  4. Form 20-F for the year ended 31 December 2025 Rio Tinto (SEC)
  5. 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.

Keep exploring

Stories with these minerals

A yellow haul truck loaded with ore, with a rack of sensors on its front and an empty cab, on a snowy mine roadEquipmentAutonomous trucksAutonomy · Open-pit minesTwo blue electric locomotives pull a long ore train along a lake shore through autumn birch woodsEquipmentConveyors, rail and portsLogistics · Moving oreHistory of miningIron, steel and the Pilbara1856-2025Gold drill-hole columns rising over the Yilgarn goldfields on a satellite map of Western AustraliaData storyUnder Western AustraliaDrill holes · Western Australia

All mining storiesThe world runs on rockAll mineralsMining by country

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).