Further again we have a long term 20 year life on a mine and it has been chosen not to build a spur line to the main for what are quite high volumes?
160 million tonnes over 20 years is around 8m tonnes per annum on 48 weeks of haulage is 167,000 tonnes per week is 40 or so trains loaded per week heading north.
Waiting for someone to tell me a siding and branch does not cost in.
So, first of all, the 160Mt is an Operations figure, not a Product figure. Also, that is including waste, so, once you discard the waste I would say that is around 118Mt over 17 Years of Expected Operations going off of the concentration figures that I have read. Which will bring it down to just under 7Mtpa, but more likely 6Mtpa. So, I suspect that they will produce ~0.2Mtpa of Titanium, ~0.6Mtpa of Magnetite. So, a couple to a few handfuls of TEUs per week for the Titanium (maybe around a train a week) and maybe Two Trains per week for the Magnetite, once they get to full operations.
So, there isn't any point in laying a Spur to the Mine Site as it just doesn't add up, this coming from someone who's Brother was responsible for the Geo Operations at Prominent Hill and who has knowledge on the Peculiar Knob Operations. The Prominent Hill Operation is dealing with similar Cu figures to the Ti expected to be coming out of TNG.
Prominent Hill has a ~120km Haul Road from their Mine Site to the Rail Head and the Peculiar Knob Haul Road was a ~90km to the Rail Head. So, an ~85km Haul Road isn't unusual. And there are longer Haul Roads in Australia.