Christmas Creek mine

The Christmas Creek mine is an iron ore mine located in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, 61 kilometres south-south-west of Nullagine, in the Chichester Range.OperatorThe mine is fully owned and operated by the Fortescue Metals Group, FMG, and is one of two iron ore mines the company operates in the Pilbara, the other being the Cloud Break mine, located 50 kilometres west of Christmas Creek.Fortescue is the third-largest iron ore mining company in the Pilbara, behind Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton.HistoryFortescue acquired the Cloud Break and Christmas Creek tenements during 2003. The company began constructing port facilities at Port Hedland in February 2006, followed by a A$3.2 billion capital raising in August 2006 to finance its projects. Construction on the Cloud Break mine began in October 2006 and Fortescue began mining at Cloud Break in October 2007. Iron ore production at the mine began in 2008 and, in its first full year of operation, the mine produced 28 million tonnes of iron ore.Processing and transportThe ore from the mine is processed on site. Initially, it was loaded onto trucks and transported to Cloud Break and then on to the coast at Port Hedland through the Fortescue railway, where it is loaded onto ships. Construction on a 280-kilometre-long railway from Cloud Break to the Herb Elliott Port at Point Hedland was begun in November 2006. The line was scheduled to be fully operational within 18 months. A cyclone in March 2007 killed two workers at the project and led to delays. The first train from the mine to the port travelled on 5 April 2008. A 50 km railway linking Christmas Creek to Cloud Break, allowing ore to be taken all the way to the port by rail, opened in December 2010; further improvements to railways are planned.