Murray Zircon Pty Ltd is an Australian mining company formed in June 2011. We operate entirely out of Australia with our head office in Adelaide. Murray Zircon owns and operates the Mindarie Mineral Sands Project. We mine and process mineral sands to produce heavy mineral concentrate (HMC). Our prime assets are located 180km east of Adelaide in the Murray Mallee region of South Australia. Our current camp facilities are located off the Karoonda Highway in Mindarie, South Australia. The mining and processing facilities are relocatable and will move throughout our strandlines as operations dictates. The mine currently operates 24 hours a day, 7 days per week.

We have five mineral sands strandlines, covered by six separate Mineral Leases (ML), six Miscellaneous Purposes Licences (MPL), one Extractive Mineral Lease (EML) and two Exploration Licences (EL) in the project area. MZ also holds an exploration tenement portfolio covering over 11,000km within the Murray Basin in South Australia and the Wimmera in Victoria.

The Mindarie Mineral Sands Project first began at the ML 6220 (Mindarie A2) and ML6226 (Mindarie C) strandlines in Mindarie between 2006 to 2009 by former owner operator, Australian Zircon NL. Murray Zircon took over the site in 2011 after the previous operator, Australian Zircon, went into voluntary administration.

Murray Zircon successfully completed rehabilitation of the project’s Mindarie A2 strandline in 2011 and commenced mining the project’s Mindarie C strandline from 2012-2015, producing a heavy mineral concentrate (HMC). Due to high costs and low commodity prices the project was placed in care and maintenance in April 2015 while completing mine rehabilitation and monitoring commitments. In 2017, the Department for Energy and Mining approved a Program for Environment Protection and Rehabilitation (PEPR) for the care and maintenance and progressive rehabilitation of the Mindarie A2 and C strandlines, which was completed in 2021. ML 6220 (Mindarie A2 strandline) was partially surrendered in 2022.

On 16 November 2022 PEPR2022/165 was approved for Early Works Construction, Mercunda Strandline in the Murray Mallee (North West of Mindarie), to allow the construction of plant and equipment on ML 6137 (Mercunda North) including building bores, earthworks and concrete construction ready for the new processing facilities. On 21 March 2023 MPEPR2022/167 was approved for the Mercunda Strandline – Stage 1 for the recovery of heavy minerals on MLs 6225 (Mercunda East), 6137 (Mercunda North) and construction of a powerline from MPL 80 along ML 6220 and MPLs 77 and 79. Mining operations commenced at the eastern end of the strand on ML 6225 moving towards ML 6137 in the west in the first half of 2023.  

Click here to visit the Department for Energy and Mining for more information. Mindarie Mineral Sands Project – Mercunda Strandline | Energy & Mining (energymining.sa.gov.au)

The mineral sands in the strandlines contain zircon, rutile and ilmenite. There are also lower levels of leucoxene and monazite present. Our deposits exist in old beachfronts and old riverbeds that existed many thousands of years ago and over time, as the waters and rivers have receded, these deposits have covered between 5 to 25 metres of surface materials.

The extracted sand is mixed with water to form a slurry in the slurry unit located in the mine pit or adjacent to the mine pit. The slurry is pumped to the Wet Concentrator Plant (WCP) where it is processed via gravity separation to form the HMC.  It is then transported by truck to Port Adelaide for export. Our customers refine the HMC to extract the individual minerals.

Zircon is used a lot in industrial ceramics for specialist applications. It is a primary component in the tiles that go on space shuttles and space vehicles. It has an incredibly low thermal co-efficient of expansion, which means when it gets hot, it doesn’t expand. Zircon is the ‘high value’ component of our mineral sands. Rutile and ilmenite are important titanium dioxide (TiO₂) feedstock minerals. Ilmenite is also used in steel making. Ilmenite and leucoxene are used to make synthetic rutile.  Rutile or synthetic rutile are then used to make TiO₂.

Titanium dioxide has been used for a century in a range of industrial and consumer products. It is added to enhance the whiteness or opacity of toothpaste, lotions, paints, pharmaceuticals, plastics and paper products. It acts as a UV filter in sunscreen and brightens the skin in foundations. One of the most widely used food pigments, food grade TiO₂ is even found in ice-creams and confectionary in some countries around the world.  

The reopening of the Mindarie Mineral Sands Project has come with a new business model and customers, instead of the uncertainty of the open market as was done previously. Every bit of ore deposit coming out of the ground is already sold.

The new processing facility, new mining facilities and an almost doubling of the mining camp was all necessary to meet the size of the new operations. Our operations are much larger than they were previously, so we will be mining at a quicker rate than we did in the past.

Murray Zircon is an incorporated Australian company owned by Orient Zirconic Resources (OZR) Australia Pty. Ltd and the Lomon Billions (LB) Group. OZR is 100% owned by Guandong Orient Zirconic Industry Science and Tech Co. Ltd (OZC), a listed company whose largest shareholders is the LB Group.

Headquartered at Shantou in Guangdong Province, OZC is one of China’s largest zircon product companies and owns the world’s widest range of Zircon products. The LB Group is the world’s third largest manufacturer of high-performance titanium dioxide pigments and first in Asia in terms of TiO2 pigment production capacity. The LB Group are financing Murray Zircon’s mining operations to secure raw material supply for their rapidly growing production capacity and provide surety for ongoing operations. Click on the link below to learn more.

LB Group | High performance titanium dioxide pigments (lomonbillions.global)

It is expected that mining in the region will exceed 5 years from mid-2023. The initial project plan for the moment is five years of definitive mining with a potential for a further four years dependent on market pricing. While difficult to predict beyond the five-year window, we do have a couple of very exciting prospects in the Murray Mallee region that are in the early stages of planning and development. The Mercunda mine will be one of the largest employers in the region once in full operation.