Atlas Iron’s Sanjiv Ridge Stage 2: design and earthworks notes for engineers
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan

First reported on Australian Mining
30 Second Briefing
Atlas Iron, owned by Hancock Prospecting, has approved Stage 2 of its Sanjiv Ridge iron ore project in Western Australia’s Pilbara, expanding production from the existing Sanjiv Ridge and nearby Miralga Creek deposits. The development will rely on conventional open-pit mining, haul trucks and on-site crushing before road haulage to port, leveraging existing Pilbara logistics rather than new rail. For geotechnical and civil contractors, the decision signals upcoming work in pit wall design, haul road construction and waste dump earthworks in hard banded iron formation terrain.
Technical Brief
- Stage 2 approval enables further cutbacks and waste stripping in existing Sanjiv Ridge pits.
- Atlas Iron will integrate Stage 2 ore with Miralga Creek feed through shared crushing infrastructure.
- Haulage will extend current road-train routes, implying incremental upgrades to Pilbara private haul roads.
- Additional ROM pads and stockpile areas are expected to be developed on constrained ridge topography.
- Waste landforms will likely expand on hard BIF foundations, requiring controlled lift placement and drainage.
- Scheduling of Stage 2 alongside Miralga Creek operations will drive tighter drill-and-blast and fleet sequencing.
- For similar Pilbara satellite deposits, the model reinforces road-based hub-and-spoke logistics over new rail.
Our Take
Within our 97 iron ore‑tagged pieces, Western Australia’s Pilbara dominates coverage, signalling that Atlas Iron’s Sanjiv Ridge Stage 2 is competing for haulage, port slots and contractor capacity in an already congested iron ore province.
Hancock Prospecting’s backing places Sanjiv Ridge alongside other privately financed Pilbara iron ore operations in our database, which typically move from approval to first ore faster than listed peers because they are less constrained by public-market capex cycles.
The progression to Stage 2 at Sanjiv Ridge, following work at Miralga Creek, suggests Atlas Iron is focusing on shorter-lead, satellite-style deposits rather than mega-hub developments, a pattern that in our coverage often aligns with flexible mine planning and opportunistic responses to iron ore price swings.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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