Closure and rehabilitation
Effective closure and rehabilitation are vital to our operations and we are committed to returning land to sustainable and beneficial use.
Our commitment
We are committed to integrating closure considerations throughout all stages of our activities to transition to closure effectively. MinRes recognises the ongoing nature of closure commitments throughout the lifecycle of our mining operations and work to ensure closure management accounts for economic, environmental, social and governance issues.
Our approach
MinRes acts in accordance with all applicable legislation and regulations, including the requirement to develop Mine Closure Plans under the Mining Act 1978 (WA). All MinRes mine sites have Mine Closure Plans to ensure mining operations are closed, decommissioned and rehabilitated in an ecologically sustainable manner. We apply a mine closure framework with an emphasis on the purposeful management of closures to integrate existing business processes with our Stakeholder Engagement Management Plan.
Our risk management
The closure of our mining operations involves procedures to remedy and rehabilitate any environmental and social impacts on local communities. There is a risk that environmental rehabilitation, ongoing monitoring and mine closure may be unsuccessful, delayed, subject to increased closure costs or involve conflict with local communities. Ensuring the effective management of closure risks throughout the lifecycle of our operations is crucial to maintaining our social licence to operate.
Potential risk
Inadequate mine closure and rehabilitation provisions leading to non-compliance with legal obligations.
Management controls/actions
- Refinement of our Closure Cost process for more accurate estimations.
- Delivery of the following process outputs:
- Lifecycle evaluation: consider closure costs at each development stage to identify potential closure risks and uncertainties. Develop a plan for engagement and deliver closure cost assessments at each development stage. Inadequate mine closure and rehabilitation provisions leading to non-compliance with legal obligations. Non-compliance with legal obligations leading to an inability to conclude operations and rehabilitate affected areas. Regulatory changes, more stringent enforcement or restrictive interpretations which incur significant additional expenditure, suspended operations or delays in the
- Scenario planning: develop a range of closure scenarios and associated costs to account for future uncertainties.
- Contingency planning: establish methodologies for capturing contingency-related costs to address unanticipated issues and challenges that may arise.
- MinRes’ financial auditors assess the site rehabilitation provisions, including assessing the reasonableness and completeness of site rehabilitation cost estimates based on the relevant current legal and regulatory requirements.
Potential risk
- Non-compliance with legal obligations leading to an inability to conclude operations and rehabilitate affected areas.
- Regulatory changes, more stringent enforcement or restrictive interpretations which incur significant additional expenditure, suspended operations or delays in the development of future assets.
Management controls/actions
- Use of life-of-mine (LOM) closure provisions to inform and drive planned closure outcomes.
- Adequate provisioning to comply with all relevant legal obligations and commitments once mining is complete.
- Pursue continuous improvement and innovation to improve closure outcomes and reduce closure costs.
- Undertake a gap analysis to identify site-specific closure knowledge gaps that carry inherent risk of future non-compliance.
- Deliver a plan to close site-specific knowledge gaps.
During FY25, MinRes undertook a review of its mine closure practices, using the ICMM Integrated Mine Closure: Good Practice Guide and the ICMM: Closure Maturity Framework as the foundation for continuous improvement across our operations. This process provided a structured framework to assess closure maturity, holistically assess closure risks and target actions that enhance closure readiness across the portfolio.
Industry collaboration
With the expanding scale of iron ore mining activities in the Pilbara, there are increasing impacts on the environment, particularly the loss of biodiversity in the region. Current best-practice restoration activities in the Pilbara only recover a small fraction of the pre-mined biodiversity in terms of the number of species and area of coverage. As a result, significant gaps in knowledge need to be addressed to enable the roll-out of cost effective and scalable restoration across the Pilbara.
One of the ways we provide our learnings and obtain information is through participation with industry peers. We are an active member of the Pilbara Rehabilitation Group (PRG) which was established by resource companies operating in the Pilbara to address rehabilitation issues more effectively.
MinRes also participates in other collaboration activities and in 2025, this included the 17th International Conference on Mine Closure in Perth and presented at the 2025 Goldfields Environmental Management Group Conference.
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