The project involves making one giant hole in the South Australian desert. How big? About the same size as the city of Paris! The Olympic Dam mine is expanding, and Bureau Veritas expertise is there to make it a success.

Size Matters
In every way, the Olympic Dam project is an impressive feat of engineering on a massive scale. Already the largest underground mine in Australia, this expansion project plans to expose the mine to the sky, to develop an adjoining site into an open pit mine.  Expected to go into production in 2014, the expanded Olympic Dam mine will become the largest mine in the world.
 
Olympic Dam is a polymetallic deposit, rich in copper, gold, silver and uranium.

Our role is key
As well as being wide, the open pit mine will also be deep, in some parts going down as far as 2km (1¼ miles). Analytical and lab services company Amdel, which became part of Bureau Veritas in May 2008, has been providing services to the Olympic Dam Operation since its discovery in 1975.

Today, Bureau Veritas continues to provide metallurgical testwork and assays to feed into feasibility and optimization studies for the owners, BHP Billiton.  Says Janine Herzig, General Manager for the Minerals and Industrial Division - Eastern Region, Bureau Veritas Australia: Our mineral processing testwork and geoanalytical results are essential to the development of this operation and expansion. Our results are incorporated into BHP Billiton's computer models which determine how big the open pit will become and what equipment and configuration is required in the processing plants.

24 hour service
The resource is currently estimated at about 6.6 billion tons (6 billion tonnes).  The volume of analysis required is such that samples need to be analyzed round the clock. This means dedicated Bureau Veritas teams work on various projects for Olympic Dam 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We use state-of-the-art equipment to provide essential metallurgical and geoanalytical services in Adelaide – 570km from the minesite.

High value stakes
About 35% of the world's known uranium resource is located at Olympic Dam, making it by far the world's largest uranium deposit.  It also contains one of the biggest resources of copper, gold and silver in the world.  
 

To know more, please click here