North West Phosphate pushes need for better infrastructure to unlock mine potential

The proponent of a giant phosphate project in northwest Queensland has called for better freight corridors, power upgrades and reliable water supply to unlock the resource rich region.

North West Phosphate managing director said phosphate was a strategic asset for Australia’s future, especially in food security and sovereign supply chains.

The proponent of a giant phosphate project in northwest Queensland has called for better freight corridors, power upgrades and reliable water supply to unlock the potential of the resource-rich region.

North West Phosphate managing director John Cotter said his company, which holds the largest phosphate resource holding in Australia at Paradise South, was close to ramping up production at the mine.

But it needed governments to deliver better infrastructure, remove red tape and create investment certainty to unlock its potential along with numerous other projects in the region.

Mr Cotter said phosphate, which is used in the production of fertiliser, was a strategic asset for Australia’s future, especially in food security and sovereign supply chains.

North West, which is close to making a final investment decision on the project, has decided to ship phosphate through the Port of Karumba in the Gulf of Carpentaria because it would have been too expensive to use the Queensland government-owned rail line to Townsville.

“We need freight corridors, power, reliable water supply, and approval processes that match the urgency of private capital – not the pace of interdepartmental memos,” said Mr Cotter.

ASX-listed Centrex, which operated a rival phosphate mine in the northwest, went into administration in March after being hit with the high cost of rail freight.

Centrex warned in January that exorbitant rail freight costs were a serious issue for the mine, which used the Mount Isa line to transport phosphate to the Port of Townsville.

In 2024 the company announced its first export of high-grade phosphate concentrate to India, which needs huge amounts of fertiliser to meet growing food demand.

North West Phosphate managing director John Cotter.

India, the world’s most populous country, is heavily reliant on imported phosphate to meet local demand and imports hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of phosphate a year, mostly from western Africa. Centrex has been upgrading its mine in the Georgina Basin to boost production further.

Earlier in May Queensland Rail announced it would introduce an incentive package to reduce access charges on the Mount Isa rail line, providing significant savings for emerging rock phosphate producers. This measure is expected to increase freight volumes and support new entrants in the market.

Mr Cotter said he had high hopes for his company’s mine, an open-cut operation that could excavate up to two million tonnes of phosphate ore a year across an initial 20-year mine life. Paradise South is adjacent to the Lady Loretta zinc mine owned by Glencore and about 130km northwest of Mount Isa.

Mining giant Glencore announced in 2023 it would close its 60-year-old Mount Isa underground copper mines within two years with the loss of up to 1200 jobs in the outback resources city.

Mr Cotter said the impending closure underscored the importance of ramping up new projects.

The North West Minerals Province is estimated to have $680bn worth of “new economy” resources such as copper, cobalt, gold and graphite crucial for the manufacture of batteries and clean energy project

Mr Cotter said after initial processing, much of the phosphate would be shipped to overseas fertiliser factories, given high energy costs in Australia made local manufacturing increasingly unfeasible. “When you’ve got plants in the US producing gas at $2 a gigajoule, it’s cheaper to finish a product over there, float it to Australia and sell it through the distribution network here,” he said.

“We’ll just export to other producers in the Asia region, so India and Indonesia, and New Zealand.

“I’d love to do some big manufacturing in Australia, but the energy cost is just horrific, just not feasible.”

The Queensland government says it has approved 30 resource leases since winning office in October 2024 as it vows to reduce regulatory bottlenecks and green tape in the sector.

Natural Resources and Mines Minister Dale Last said the approvals included 12 mining and 14 petroleum leases, helping relieve a bottleneck that had delayed some projects for more than a decade.

Originally published as North West Phosphate pushes need for better infrastructure to unlock mine potential