Overview -
Robe River is operated by Pilbara Iron,
a joint venture between Rio Tinto an Anglo-Australian resources group, Mitsui, a Japanese trading company, and two Japanese steel companies, Sumitomo Metal Industries and Nippon Steel Corporation. Robe currently employs over 950 employees working on 12 hour shifts 365 days a year.
The Robe project began in 1962, ten years before actual start-up of operations, with Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company (an American iron and steel producer).
In 1970 construction commenced on a mine site, railway, processing facilities and two company towns - Pannawonica and Wickham. Two years later, Robe started to produce pellets and sinter fines ore, and in October 1972 the first shipment of ore left Cape Lambert (Port Walcott). Pellet production was discontinued in 1980 due to changing economic conditions and the entire capacity of the operation was converted to the production of sinter fines.
In 1994, mining activities were consolidated on a single large-scale deposit at Mesa J. Robe pioneered the development of pisolite lump ore in 1995, initially at a rate of almost one million tonnes per year with exports steadily increasing to more than 7.6 million tonnes by the end of 2002. Today, Mesa J remains the largest supplier of lower-grade iron ore in the world.
West Angelas began development in 1994 and mines a higher grade Marra Mamba ore. The mine became fully operational in 2002 after the construction of mine facilities including a 300-bed village, processing plant, new railway infrastructure and expansion of port facilities at Cape Lambert.
In 2005 ore production from the Pannawonica and West Angelas mines totalled roughly 99 million tonnes.
