NSS has stepped up to help Glencore make the most of its copper assets in North Queensland.
Glencore owns Copper Refineries Limited (CRL) in Townsville. It is one of only two in the country. The other is at Olympic Dam in South Australia.
CRL processes copper anode smelt in Mount Isa to 99.9 percent, industrial-grade metal known as cathode.
NSS was handling more anode imports which are refined at CRL to keep production at optimum levels, NSS General Manager Mark George said.
“Now we’re also handling more anode traffic from overseas smelters. It’ll go straight to CRL into the tank houses and be turned into a pure copper.
“NSS will then manage the export of that cathode to market.”
Mount Isa Mines is also importing more copper concentrate to be backloaded to the Mount Isa smelter. It’s being sourced from all over Australia.
“The copper concentrate comes in on the bulk vessels,” Mark said. “We’ll discharge the copper cons out using our ship unloader and our big hopper we’ve got there and feed that straight into trucks.
“That’ll go into the NSS negative pressure shed on the lease at Port of Townsville. We’ll then load that into half-height containers and it gets delivered onto rail and out to Mount Isa for smelting.
“It’s then railed back into CRL in Townsville as anode to be processed further.”
The opportunities CRL presented to North Queensland are not generally well appreciated, Mark said.
“CRL is part of an ecosystem of mines and manufacturing businesses that stretches across the state.
“CRL has been in Townsville a long time and people probably forget it’s there. It’s great for the economy, keeps business up to the port and adds capacity to the whole region.
“It helps sustain Townsville’s position as a bulk handling facility which is unique in many ways. There are a lot of people employed directly and indirectly and its contribution could be better recognised.”