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Mines/Australia

Mount Newman mine

Mount Newman mine, Australia. Producing, open pit, mining iron ore since 1969.

Why Mount Newman is famous

Mt Newman joint venture in the Pilbara. Production began at Mt Whaleback in 1969. BHP's Western Australia Iron Ore is guided at 253 to 264 Mt (BHP share) for FY2027. The lease sits under the Iron Ore (Mount Newman) Agreement Act 1964. USGS lists BHP 85 per cent, Mitsui-Itochu Iron 10 per cent and Itochu Minerals and Energy of Australia 5 per cent, with a capacity of 42 Mt a year in 2021.1,2,3,4

Story cards

Timeline

  1. 1885Broken Hill Proprietary Company formed6
  2. 1960Iron ore export embargo lifted7

What kind of deposit

Banded iron formation (Superior and Algoma types)

Mount Newman today

Where iron ore is mined todayMining in Australia

Where next

People

Discovered byStan HilditchA prospector who stumbled on the ore body that became Mt Newman.5

Mines

Same kind of depositCarajas S11D / Northern SystemMt Newman began in 1969. Carajas Serra Norte followed in 1984.1

Events

Owned byBroken Hill Proprietary Company formedBHP now runs Mt Newman, where production began at Mt Whaleback in 1969.1Came out ofIron ore export embargo liftedProduction began at Mt Whaleback in 1969 under the Mount Newman agreement.1

Places

Located inNewmanMount Newman is about 3 km from Newman.1

Deposit types

An example ofBanded iron formation (Superior and Algoma types)Mount Newman belongs to the banded iron formation family of deposits.8

Sources

  1. Form 20-F for the year ended 30 June 2026 BHP Group (SEC)
  2. data/minerals/operations.csv Prospector Trails (internal)
  3. Annual Report on Form 20-F for the year ended 30 June 2026 BHP Group (SEC)
  4. 2020-21 Minerals Yearbook, Australia (advance release) US Geological Survey
  5. Stan Hilditch State Library of Western Australia
  6. History of Broken Hill Broken Hill City Council
  7. Lang Hancock (Mining and Energy Western Australia exhibition) State Library of Western Australia
  8. 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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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).