Michael Harding sloshes across the yard of his Esperance depot in drizzling winter rain.
The owner of Freight Lines Group, which runs 140 trucks across the state, is among the businesses and workers on WA’s southern coast dealt a double blow in the past few months.
First was news the Ravensthorpe Nickel Operation was closing for the third time in 15 years.
“We do all their general freight,” he said.
“So yeah, that’s impacted our Ravensthorpe depot operations.”
Then last week, Mineral Resources announced its Koolyanobbing iron ore mine, almost 600 kilometres north, would also be shutting its gates by year’s end.
“That has a massive flow on in town, to the shops, to the sporting clubs, to the pubs, to basically everything,” Mr Harding said.
“We potentially lose people out of town.”
Mineral Resources has said the 1,000 direct employees impacted by the closure would be redeployed across its other mine sites.
In Southern Cross, the town closest to the site, most residents expected the impacts to be minimal.
“Because they don’t patronise the local businesses very much,” Yilgarn Shire deputy president Bryan Close said.
But it was a different story in Esperance, where the mine’s iron ore made up more than half the total export business from the port, which employed about 160 people.
Southern Ports chief executive Keith Wilks said he was “extremely disappointed” by the news.
“We are still determining the full effect on our business,” he said.
“We’ll be working over the coming period to assess the situation more fully.
“However, given Mineral Resources is a major customer for Southern Ports and Port of Esperance, it is reasonable to assume this will have a significant impact on our operations.”
Less than a year ago, Mineral Resources signed a three-year contract to continue exporting iron ore through the Esperance Port.
Southern Ports has not said if penalties would arise from breaking that contract early.
“Our staff are our immediate priority, and we will be working over the coming period to put a plan in place to take us forward,” Mr Wilks said.
First Quantum Minerals, which operated the recently shuttered Ravensthorpe Nickel Operation, was also a major importer and exporter through the port.
Aurizon, which operates trains from the Yilgarn mine, said it was working through a “ramp down” process with impacted Esperance and Kalgoorlie staff.
Arc Infrastructure, which operates the railway, declined to comment.
Support worth $270 million
The mine had looked set to close in 2018.
But fearing job losses, the state government went to extraordinary lengths to prevent that from happening.
It struck a deal with Mineral Resources, granting it royalty relief for five years if it kept the mine open.
At the time, commentators guessed it would result in the state foregoing about $62 million in royalties.
But the price of iron ore skyrocketed, and the deal helped the miner save more than $270 million in royalty payments by February last year.
Mr Harding said its decision to down tools less than two years later left a bad taste.
“I find that pretty disappointing,” he said.
“That a massive company like that gets $270-million in credit and then decides to walk away when it suits them.”
Mineral Resources said further royalty relief would not change its decision to close the mine.
It said it would continue to export spodumene concentrate through the Esperance Port.
Hunt begins for new exporters
Earlier this month, the state government announced that another iron ore exporter, Gold Valley, would be using the Esperance Port.
While the 1.5 million tonnes a year it planned to export would not fill the 7.6-million-tonne-a-year hole left by Mineral Resources, residents hoped new customers might be secured in the next six months.
Mr Wilks said Southern Ports was always looking to explore new trade opportunities.
“That’s what obviously everyone will be hoping for,” Esperance Shire President Ron Chambers said.
“That we can find someone else that wants to utilise that capacity.”
Mr Chambers said the town was better placed to handle the closure in 2024 than it had been in 2018, largely because of the growth in lithium mining and exploration.
“[We will] sit down and see whether there’s any of those sorts of projects or packages that we can ask the state government to assist with,” he said.
He said the shire would talk to stakeholders and the state government about how it could support the community in coming months.