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Mines/Australia

Mount Keith mine

Mount Keith mine, Australia. Care and maintenance, open pit, mining nickel.

Why Mount Keith is famous

Mount Keith is a disseminated nickel sulphide open pit in the Goldfields of Western Australia. Western Mining Corporation commissioned it in 1995 and BHP acquired it in 2005. The concentrator has a nominal capacity of 11 Mtpa of ore. Nickel West moved to temporary suspension in the period to 31 December 2024.1,2

Story cards

Timeline

  1. 1969Windarra and Mount Keith nickel found3

What kind of deposit

Magmatic nickel-copper-PGE sulphide

Mount Keith today

Where nickel is mined todayMining in Australia

Where next

Mines

Partner ofKambalda nickelBHP's Nickel West held both Kambalda and Mount Keith, now on care and maintenance.1

Events

Came out ofWindarra and Mount Keith nickel foundMount Keith was found in 1969, the same year as Windarra.3

Deposit types

An example ofMagmatic nickel-copper-PGE sulphideMount Keith belongs to the magmatic nickel-copper-pge sulphide family of deposits.4

Sources

  1. data/minerals/operations.csv Prospector Trails (internal)
  2. Annual Report on Form 20-F for the year ended 30 June 2026 BHP Group (SEC)
  3. Nickel (Mining and Energy Western Australia exhibition) State Library of Western Australia
  4. 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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Pictures: Escondida Mine, Chile, NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (Public domain (NASA media, no copyright)).