The historic Eldverton copper mine was abandoned in 1992. Its tailings have been used as a valuable fertiliser product by a local company
The Eldverton copper mine sits beside the road from Ravensthorpe to Hopetoun.
It has been mined for precious metals on and off since 1899 and was a key supplier of copper during WWI.
At its peak in the 1960s, it was responsible for 30 per cent of WA’s copper production.
The resource had not been mined since 1971 and was declared abandoned in 1992.
Then, in 1996, Newdegate farmers Gale and Mark Williams came along.
“It was curiosity. One day my father and I were driving down Hopetoun Road, saw this dump, drove in, shovelled a load on the back of the ute, drove out, went back to the farm and started playing with it,” Mr Williams told Business News.
As it turned out, the Eldverton mine was home to an abundant deposit of trace elements valuable to agricultural fertiliser production.
The family founded The Mineral Fertiliser Company and started extracting what they dubbed the Supermin product from Eldverton for domestic sale.
“We developed it to what it is today. We export overseas and to local farmers in WA; horticulture, turf farms, cattle farms, sheep farms, canola farms,” Mr Williams said.
“Replace all the agricultural minerals that are needed in our soil, because WA, I’ve been told, has [among] the worst soils in the world.
“It contains over 20 minerals that are required for agriculture and contains no nasties in it. The product is certified organic under Australian standards.”
The fertiliser is derived from the mine’s tailings, of which there are 700,000 tonnes left from the initial 1mt resource.
The local model worked for a while.
Over the years, however, a mix of government red tape, an independent fertiliser company closing down, and a preference from WA farmers for NPK fertilisers led to export markets becoming the company’s main game.
Supermin is supplied to Vietnamese rice farmers, South Korean cattle farms and Japanese citrus operations.
Thailand and Malaysia are also on the radar. Longer term, China and the US are the big fish Mr Williams is eager to catch.
“Asia has always wanted to feed itself, and they have enormous agricultural enterprises in Asia producing a lot of food, and some of their food was losing its yield and taste,” Mr Williams said.
“Thailand … had poisoned their soils. They had lettuces no bigger than your fist, because they just put too much NPK on.
“I taught them how to get rid of that and replace it with minerals.”
Supermin still has a band of rusted-on local supporters, mainly in the horticulture sector.
Mr Williams said the reported fertiliser shortage in Australia this year had not piqued interest from local farmers in his product, however.
He is critical of modern NPK-reliant agricultural practices and the influence of agronomists in the system.
Still, there is an eye on domestic and overseas growth, especially if the right miner comes knocking on the door.
Mr Williams said there was potential to reopen the old mine due to the healthy price precious metals are fetching.
He wants to bring on a third party to mine the deposit – though was adamant he did not want to work with a cash-strapped junior explorer – while continuing to process the tailings for fertiliser himself.
“You can run a rough figure over the area using the average grades and I think we come up with about $6 billion worth of copper, gold and silver,” Mr Williams said.
“That’s without the cobalt and the rare earths, if you’re into that. “All the reports are being done. There’s a lot of groundwork, magnetics, drilling, soil chemistry, IP.
“With the mining processing, I’m sure it would probably entail at least 50 to … 100 people on construction for the area.”
The Supermin product generated from the tailings carries an average grade of 0.16 per cent copper, 0.01 per cent cobalt, and 0.5 parts per million of gold, among 17 other minerals.
A resumption of mining would extend the remit of the fertiliser operation. Mr Williams said an additional 50mt of tailings suitable for fertiliser could be created by resources extraction at Eldverton.
Currently, the small amount of fertiliser is trucked from Ravensthorpe to Fremantle for export.
Should larger volumes be enabled, and container ships return to Esperance, the south coast port would be a far more viable option.
