Australia to shake up the salt market with giant BCI project

James Thornhill
and
Josh Wall
08:00am October 23 2024

Salt is so much more than the seasoning you put on your food - it’s a versatile mineral with a wide range of industrial uses, putting it in high demand from manufacturers across Asia.

Australia, already a significant global producer, is about to welcome its first major salt operation in more than two decades. 

The $1.6 billion Mardie salt and potash project being developed by BCI Minerals on the Pilbara coast of Western Australia will be the country’s largest salt project and the third largest globally, producing 5.3 million tonnes per annum of high-quality industrial salt. 

“This is a significant project and will be a major contributor to the economy,” says BCI Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer David Boshoff. Mardie has the potential to contribute $4.8 billion to GDP over its prospective 60-year lifespan, according to the company’s estimates.

Westpac is playing a key role in Mardie’s development, acting as mandated lead arranger, underwriter and bookrunner for the commercial bank tranche of a $981 million syndicated project finance facility for BCI Minerals, which reached financial close in October. 

Westpac also acted as sustainability coordinator on the $331 million green loan component of the financing.  

The bank saw the scale of potential in Mardie and how it was well positioned to meet Asia’s growing demand for salt, says James Duncan, a Westpac relationship manager who specialises in the metals and mining industry.

“Being able to partner with companies that are like minded and want to develop projects in a sustainable way is also incredibly important to us,” he adds.

At Mardie, the sun and wind will do most of the work, with sea water from the Indian Ocean evaporated progressively across a series of giant ponds to create salt. Any sea water left over will get recycled back to the start of the process. 

The Pilbara coast is a highly prospective location for salt production due to its proximity to the ocean, hot temperatures and high windspeeds. Five existing solar evaporation salt projects have operated successfully in the region for up to fifty years. 

As a by-product of the evaporation process, BCI also plans to produce commercial quantities of potassium sulphate, or potash, which is used as a fertiliser in agriculture.

Asian demand

BCI Minerals has already secured offtake agreements with salt buyers in China and Indonesia and hopes to do similar deals with customers in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. 

Salt has a broad array of industrial uses, including in the manufacture of chemicals, textiles, ceramics and PVC. It’s also an important ingredient in technology that is key to the clean energy transition, including solar panels, wind turbines, and sodium-ion batteries.

While battery production for electric vehicles has largely focused on lithium-ion batteries, there is a growing interest in sodium-ion battery technology for its potential to charge faster and last longer. 

Salt production via solar evaporation is also less carbon intensive than most methods of lithium mining, something BCI Minerals is keen to demonstrate. 

In recognition of salt’s strategic importance as a facilitator of the clean energy transition, BCI Minerals’ Mardie Project is being supported by the government’s Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility and Export Finance Australia.

Construction of the Mardie Project, which spreads across 100 square kilometres, began in 2022 and is now around 50 per cent complete, Boshoff says. BCI Minerals is targeting its first shipment of industrial salt to Asia in the second quarter of FY27.
 

James Thornhill

James Thornhill was appointed as editor of Westpac Wire in May 2022. Prior to joining the bank, he was a business and financial journalist with more than two decades of experience with international newswires. Most recently, he was a resources correspondent for Bloomberg, covering the mining and energy sectors, and previously reported on a broad range of topics from economics and politics to currency and bond markets. Originally from the UK, he’s had stints working in London, New York and Singapore, but is now happily settled in Sydney.

Josh Wall

Josh Wall is the Head of Video at Westpac Wire. Prior to joining the team, he spent 10 years as a video journalist and documentary filmmaker, most recently as Head of Video for the Guardian Australia. He also worked across numerous News Corp mastheads in Sydney as a presenter, producer, writer and video journalist. Josh is originally from Perth, Western Australia where he began his career by co-creating a video magazine that focused on music and the arts.

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