Japan-based NYK Line is building a new slurry tanker for shipments of New Zealand ironsands to China and Japan.NYK and New Zealand Steel Mining Ltd (NZSM) -- the local face of BlueScope, the former BHP conglomerate which controls the Glenbrook steel mill
Japan-based NYK Line is building a new slurry tanker for shipments of New Zealand ironsands to China and Japan.
NYK and New Zealand Steel Mining Ltd (NZSM) -- the local face of BlueScope, the former BHP conglomerate which controls the Glenbrook steel mill -- have agreed to extend their current contract for an additional 15 years for the transport of ironsand from New Zealand to China and Japan, NYK said in a statement.
NYK and NZSM are nearing the end of a contract for the transport of ironsand slurry using the 150,000 tonne Taharoa Express: the only vessel in the world designed to load ironsand slurry.
The ship, built in 1999, dewaters the slurry during its voyage out from NZ and is able to discharge the ironsand as a normal bulk cargo .
Shipments under the new contract will begin from 2012 using a new 175,000 tonne vessel that will be built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd, also dedicated to the transport of slurry.
The annual volume shipped is expected to be about 1.2 million tonnes.
The main mine site covers an area of 1300 hectares, leased from Maori landowners, and has been shipping the sands of Taharoa to North Asia since 1972, with peak exports of two million tonnes in the late 1970s.
Sand is extracted from a pond by a floating dredge, then magnets are used to extract between 200 and 300 tonnes of iron each hour, which is eventually pumped onto the ship through a pipeline to an off-shore single buoy mooring.
The ironsand (titanomagnetite) was formed through the breakdown of rocks originating from volcanic activity in Taranaki 2.5 million years ago and deposited by ocean currents as dunes of up to 90m high.
Bought from the Government by Equiticorp in 1987, New Zealand Steel was taken over by BHP in 1992. In addition to the steel mill, it owns the 150 million tonnes of ironsand at Waikato North Head -- mining up to 1.2m tonnes there each year -- and the Taharoa mine site used to supply North Asia.
NZPA
