General News
21 August, 2024
Mount Isa City Council eyes major transport, logistics hub on mining lease
The council needs permission from Glencore before it can lobby for state and federal funding.
Mount Isa mayor Peta MacRae has called on Glencore to release more than 500 acres of vacant land as the council begins lobbying efforts to deliver a transport and logistics hub that will form a key component of its economic diversification strategy.
Located north of Mount Isa between the airport and George Fisher mine, the 521-acre allotment is currently controlled by Glencore and runs parallel to the Barkly Highway.
One of the perks of the site is that it has access to existing power and water infrastructure.
Mount Isa City Council chief executive officer Tim Rose said Glencore had expressed its willingness to release the land in 2020 after a business case report for the hub was completed by the council.
He said Glencore officials had advised the council at the time that exploration at the site had not uncovered any worthwhile deposits, and the company had no plans to develop the area.
“It is ideally located for the hub because it is on a national highway, it has power lines running through the allotment and it is adjacent to the pipeline from Lake Julius to Lake Moondarra,”
he said.
Cr MacRae said a transport and logistics hub had been identified as a key project in the council’s soon-to-be-released transition strategy, which focuses on diversifying the local economy and providing new employment opportunities for the 1200 affected workers when copper underground operations cease next year.
A transport and logistics hub has been an ambition of numerous Mount Isa councils for three decades, however Cr MacRae said the need to transition the city economy beyond the underground copper closures next year had brought an urgency to the project.
She said the hub, tentatively named the Australian Critical Minerals Industrial Precinct (ACMIP), would require about $50 million in state and federal government funding to support its development.
Cr MacRae said council had been approached by eight proponents spruiking a range of projects that could be located at the precinct, ranging from a tyre recycling business to robotic module home construction and battery component manufacturing that could provide up to 800 local jobs.
As the name suggests, Cr MacRae said she also wanted ACMIP to include critical mineral and rare earth research facilities.
She said it was planned that ACMIP would be primarily powered by local renewable energy projects, which form another central economic pillar in the diversification strategy.
Cr MacRae said delivering ACMIP was a top priority of her term as mayor, and she wanted it to be operational before the next council elections in March 2028.
“The reports that council has commissioned while formulating our transition strategy have identified this precinct as the number one priority piece of development,” she told North West Weekly.
“So everything points to needing to make this happen- but we need to secure the land.”
Cr MacRae said Glencore could commit to releasing the land in the form of a written letter of support.
She said that would allow council to include the letter in its lobbying efforts to secure the required government funding during the upcoming state election campaign.
“We have the skilled labour in the city, and we have the social licence to do heavy industrial projects – so we want to play to our strengths to create wealth and jobs,” Cr MacRae said.
“We appreciate the haste that Glencore is moving to assist us in this project.”
A Glencore spokesperson said the land was within the Mount Isa Mines operational lease and adjacent to active mining operations.
The spokesperson said Glencore would engage directly with Mount Isa City Council once internal reviews on the area were complete.