Production

GMA Garnet is produced in Australia by the world's largest producer of garnet abrasive with resources in excess of 8 million tonnes of garnet. The scale of mining and a state-of-the-art refining process with total quality control have made GMA Garnet the largest supplier of a product that now has growing demand across the industrialised countries of the globe.

The demand is certainly diversified. It includes the use of GMA Garnet as a blast medium on structures of the scale of the Sydney Harbour Bridge to shipbuilding and the laying of record-breaking pipelines to the maintenance of giant offshore structures. High-tech industries such as the world's major aircraft manufacturing plants use GMA Garnet for precision water jet cutting of their most sophisticated components. GMA Garnet has a host of other applications.

The source of GMA's superior product is from its extensive operations and garnet bearing dune sands on Australia's mid-west coast. The stepping stones to that location are through Western Australia's capital city of Perth, then 400 klms north to GMA's dry processing and ship out point of Geraldton and beyond to tiny Port Gregory with its convict history of first settlement and its present day cray-fishing industry.

Quarrying

GMA's operations, located a few klms inland have now produced more than a million tonnes of highly refined, non-toxic industrial garnet from its mining and wet-processing operations.

Feed Equipment

In a daily 24 hr production schedule, dump trucks take the ore to stockpiles and feed hoppers at GMA's wet plant.

Wet Concentrator

In the wet concentrator, spiral classifiers, which use water and gravity-induced centrifugal forces separate garnet from lighter trash minerals. Hydrosizers use upward flowing water and controlled slurry density to lift out fine minerals. The garnet concentrate travels on a vacuum filter belt through several stages of final washing with fresh water to ensure that the GMA product has very low chloride levels, well below internationally accepted levels.

Quality Control

Strict sampling and laboratory testing checks the quality of the new semi-refined garnet concentrate which can then be stockpiled at the plant site.

Concentrate output & Stockpile

What emerges from the wet plant along the conveyor and pipelines is garnet concentrate and the separated tailing sands.

Restoration

The tailing sands are trucked back to replace the mined dunes which are re-shaped to natural contours and covered with the original topsoil for rehabilitation with seed and natural growth.

Concentrate Receival

The stockpiled garnet is trucked 100 klms south to the port of Geraldton and GMA's extensive dry processing and despatch facilities.

Dry Processing

Incoming garnet concentrate feeds through natural gas-fired rotary dryers and onto rare earth magnetic separators to remove any last impurities. Non magnetic minerals spin off in an outer cut, separated garnet forms a middle stream, and the more magnetic minerals fall below. The now pure and refined concentrate passes through a series of vibrating screens which grade the garnet into various size ranges for its eventual uses.

Quality Control

Again, strict sampling and laboratory tests prove garnet purity, size analysis, chlorides and conductivity.

Packaged & Bulk Products

The end line of the dry processing plant is the packaging section with automatic twin-spout bagging machines filling 25kg packs supplying to robotic palletising equipment. Pure garnet flows into 2 tonne bulk bags, all of it stored in warehouses at the plant.

Storage

Bulk garnet is stockpiled in large storage sheds at Geraldton port.

Despatch

GMA Garnet being shipped out to GMA's world markets.

GMA Garnet takes pride in the fact that its product is proven to be the highest quality natural abrasive and cutting medium available in the modern era.

GMA Garnet's success follows a well-defined path. It can be seen in the quality of its deposits, in the mineral-rich dunes near Port Gregory. It is demonstrated in the superbly-controlled refining and production facilities all down the line and in the endorsement of its product by an ever-growing stream of users across the globe.

The entire production process of GMA Garnet from mining to processing and administration is certified under the ISO 9001:2000 (Management Systems) and ISO 14001:2004 (Environment Management Systems) international standards.