ONLY from the air can the size and scale of the remote Beyondie project, that from about this time next year will begin commercial production of Australia's first Sulphate of Potash (SoP) fertiliser, be truly appreciated.
More than 400 hectares of red sand hill and thin, scratchy scrub and spinifex have been cleared in the East Pilbara's Little Sandy Desert, 160 kilometres south-east of Newman and are being laser planed to provide an exact but almost imperceptible fall from one end to the other.
Four Case 550 and a Versatile 620 articulated four-track tractors doing the job are identical to those used by farmers across the Wheatbelt, 1000km and more to the south, but in this application they drag computer-controlled belly scrapers operating in tandem, taking tops off high points and filling low points.
Agricultural tractors proved faster and more economical on this job than the monster self-propelled belly scrapers normally associated with mining and massive earthworks.
They are preparing the floor of what will be a series of linked, gravity-flowed solar ponds to evaporate off water from potassium-rich brine pumped from paleochannels - ancient riverbeds now underground - through 29 production bores and collected in 43 kilometres of trench.
Metre-high earth bund walls dividing the area into individual ponds of increasing salts concentrations will be constructed at the last minute as thick black plastic lining sheets are rolled out and welded together to form a giant waterproof membrane.
Attempts to build bund walls any earlier have been blown away by desert winds.
Some of the 70 workers on site have started rolling out and welding the black plastic to line a massive 'pre-concentrator' pond being built between Ten Mile and Sunshine Lakes, two salt lakes tapped for their brine in the 30-year projected first stage of the Kalium Lakes Ltd (KLL) Beyondie SoP project.
There are a further 12 salt lakes covered by KLL tenements for future stages of SoP and other valuable elements recovery and production.
The evaporation ponds under construction are close to Ten Mile Lake.
Sunshine Lake is a further 40km away so the pre-concentrator pond is designed to remove half of the liquid volume of brine pumped from there to the evaporation ponds.
So far, 100,000 square metres of plastic has been rolled out - covering about a third of the pond floor and being held down by sand bags - with some valuable lessons learned.
Pond lining is now carried out at night under floodlights because heat absorbed and then radiated back by the plastic during 38°C days made it unbearable to work on for more than a few minutes at a time.
Even in the chill of the desert night workers can feel the radiated heat.
Also, desert winds generally disappear at night so the occupational health and safety officer's re-occurring nightmare of workers drifting off across the Little Sandy Desert clutching a 200 metre by eight metre sheet of black plastic have abated.
At a small ceremony outside the wet mess on Wednesday last week to formally open the first stage of the Beyondie SoP mine's permanent fly-in and drive-in accommodation village, KLL managing director Brett Hazelden outlined some statistics for about 30 KLL and contract workers, Balcatta head office staff and guests flown in for the occasion and representatives from traditional owners, the Gingirana and Birriliburu people.
If the plastic sheets for pond lining were laid end to end, they would stretch almost 1400km from Beyondie to Bunbury, Mr Hazelden said.
The project had involved 50 days of surveying, grading or bulldozing of 350km of tracks with each kilometre walked in advance with traditional owners to identify features, plants or animals of significance and drilling of 750 bore holes, including some 40km away to provide potable water for the village, he said.
When it begins production of standard grade SoP fertiliser in the fourth quarter next year Beyondie will become the world's fifth operating SoP mine producing from brine, so rarely is the right combination of Potassium and Sulphur found in commercially viable quantities, Mr Hazelden pointed out.
As previously reported in Farm Weekly, KLL's standard SoP fertiliser will contain more than 51 per cent potassium oxide and less than 1pc chloride and will be produced at an initial rate of 25,000-35,000 tonnes per annum.
A granular fertiliser with the same potassium oxide and chlorine content will follow from the first quarter 2021 at a rate of 50,000-60,000tpa, with a premium soluble SoP fertiliser, at more than 52pc potassium oxide and less than 0.5pc chlorine, produced at a rate of 10,000-20,000tpa from 2022.
Last month Beyondie was granted major project status by the Federal government because of its strategic significance for Australian agriculture and horticulture and its potential impact on Australia's balance of trade through export earnings.
Since KLL listed on the Australian Securities Exchange just before Christmas 2016, more than $32 million has been poured into research and Beyondie's red sands - ironically, the project is named after a small, almost circular nearby salt lake that does not feature in KLL's current plans.
By the end of this year expenditure will have jumped to more than $50m and then it will really ramp up quickly.
The day before last week's opening ceremony, the KLL board - chairman Mal Randall, Mr Hazelden, Rudolph van Niekerk and Stephen Dennis - approved the milestone final investment decision.
That decision formally cleared the way for expenditure of funds available through a successful $72m capital raising in August, about $102m in loan facilities to be provided by Germany's KfW IPEX-Bank, a $74m Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility loan and a $15m working capital facility from Westpac Banking Corporation.
"This milestone effectively triggers the use of the company's financial capacity, to transform our core objective of becoming Australia's first commercial Sulphate of Potash producer into reality," Mr Randall told last week's gathering.
He said rather than mark time until the final investment decision was made, the company had continued to work towards its objective in anticipation of a favourable decision.
"We think that was a wise move," Mr Randall said.
A raised, levelled and compacted site big enough to accommodate several Welshpool distribution warehouse-sized buildings has already been prepared for the SoP processing and purification plant.
Plant layout has been fixed and it will combine German and North American technologies - the major SoP producers outside of China.
Contracts have been awarded to three German companies - SoP processing specialist K-Utec Salt Technologies, furnace specialists Ebner and high-pressure roller ore crusher specialist Koppern.
Those contracts were pivotal in obtaining the German bank loan and what is effectively a German government guarantee against default for half of the loan.
Elements of the modular processing and purification plant will begin arriving on site and the local arm of DRA Global will begin putting it together like a giant Meccano set from the first quarter next year.
A contract has been let for construction of a 70km pipeline out to the Dampier-Bunbury Natural Gas Pipeline beside the Great Northern Highway to the west and with APA Group for supply of gas to fuel the furnace which will heat evaporation pond harvest salts to free and purify SoP.
On Monday KLL announced it had signed a $10m contract for the design, supply, installation and commissioning of a 7.5 megawatt gas-fired power station for Beyondie.
One of the last people to wander the desert living off the land in the area now covered by KLL's Beyondie project, the last Gingirana elder Billy Atkins, believed to be aged in his 80s, was a special guest at last week's ceremony.
His grandson and Gingirana spokesman from the remote Parnngurr community, Slim Williams, translated his emotional speech about being the last on the land.
The Beyondie SoP project is across parts of the Kumarina and Marymia pastoral leases and the boundary between Gingirana and Birriliburu traditional lands.
The day after the ceremony, KLL representatives on a consultation committee which meets regularly with traditional owners, sat down with Mr Williams and other community members to discuss what training and job opportunities the Beyondie project will offer young Indigenous people.
- Mal Gill was flown to the Beyondie SoP project as a guest of KLL.