The Pardoo Project is located approximately 75km east of Port Hedland. Access to the project is via the Great Northern Highway which transects the southern portion of the project area. BHP Billiton Ltd (BHPB) owns and operates the Goldsworthy railway line, which runs parallel to the highway.

Pardoo is Atlas' first producing iron ore mine, having commenced operations in October 2008. The operation produces a quality low-alumina DSO product from a number of open pits, which provide flexibility in blending to produce ore which meets the customer's requirements. Ore is mined by a conventional truck-and-backhoe mining fleet, before being crushed and screened on site and delivered to port by covered road trains. The road haulage operators observe a curfew between the hours of 4pm and 6pm in order to avoid peak evening traffic times in the Port Hedland community.

Geology and Resources
The project area lies within the Ord Range Greenstone Belt that comprises predominantly of the Nimingarra Iron Formation. Strike equivalents of this formation host the BHPB Goldsworthy, Shay Gap and Yarrie Iron Ore operations, in addition to De Grey Mining Ltd's Turner River gold deposits which lie to the east and southwest of the Pardoo/Goldsworthy Project area respectively.

Atlas has defined 14 separate DSO resources and one CID (channel iron deposit) resource at Pardoo, as well as the world-class Ridley Magnetite Project. There are also a number of DSO prospects in the area which are currently in the resource pipeline, to be delivered into the Pardoo resource portfolio as exploration progresses. The continued exploration potential of the area was demonstrated in late 2008 with the discovery of a high-grade hematite body to the east of the Alice deposit. This discovery, Alice East, was the highest-grade drilling intersection ever recorded at Pardoo and yet it was made in an area which had already been covered by wider-spaced exploration drilling.

Excised from within the project are the Ord and Ridley Iron Ore deposits held by BHPB, for which open file reports indicate potential of greater than 25 Mt at grades over 55 % Fe. These estimates are conceptual in nature and do not constitute a JORC compliant resource.

Please click to view enlarged version of above map.

Figure 1: Pardoo prospect location plan and mineralised trends.

Figure 2: An aerial view of part of the Pardoo Operation. Administration and workshops are in the foreground, crushing, screening and ROM area in the middle and Bobby DSO pit furthest from camera.