Bootu Creek Mine

OM (Manganese) Ltd (“OMM”) owns and operates the Bootu Creek manganese ore mine in Northern Territory, Australia. The Bootu Creek Mine is located 110km north of Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory of Australia, and exported its first shipment of ore in 2006.

Exploration at Bootu Creek commenced in 2001, with drilling completed in 2004 under an early JV structure with GEMCO (the Groote Eylandt Mining Company). Mining commenced at the end of 2005 and the first batch of ore was processed and shipped in 2006. The mine became wholly owned by the Group in 2007.

Bootu Creek is an owner operated mine and is mined conventionally via an open-cut method of mining, blasting, and excavation using hydraulic excavators and dump trucks. The mined ore is crushed, scrubbed, and concentrated using heavy media separation through two plants, yielding products of different grades and sizes.

The original processing plant was designed for a nominal capacity of 550,000 metric tonnes per annum. Equipment upgrading and improvements have brought the target production capacity to 800,000 metric tonnes of product per annum. Bootu Creek produces a siliceous ore particularly suited for use in the production of silico-manganese.

The UFP (Ultra Fines Plant) was added in March 2020 and was designed to treat the tailings streams to produce a nominal 250,000 tonnes per annum. However, there has been a number of startup issues associated with the UFP including poor screening efficiencies which affected the downstream separation and optimisation of the classifiers. Rectification works are ongoing with measures implemented aimed at optimising the performance of the UFP. 

Mining operations ceased on 13 Dec 2021 after reaching its natural end of mine life. The mine was subsequently placed on Care and Maintenance mode since the end of January 2022. 

OM Holdings Ltd.
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