Three Springs Mine
Encyclopedia
Three Springs Mine is a talc
Talc
Talc is a mineral composed of hydrated magnesium silicate with the chemical formula H2Mg34 or Mg3Si4O102. In loose form, it is the widely-used substance known as talcum powder. It occurs as foliated to fibrous masses, its crystals being so rare as to be almost unknown...

 mine
Mining
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...

 located outside of Three Springs, Western Australia
Three Springs, Western Australia
Three Springs is located 313 km north of Perth, Western Australia on the Midlands Road. Wheat farming is the main industry.The first Europeans to pass through the Three Springs area were Lieutenant George Grey and his party in 1839. The next exploration of the area in 1846 was undertaken by...

. Owned and operated by the Luzenac Group
Luzenac Group
The Luzenac Group is a talc mining company headquartered in Toulouse, France. The company is the world's largest producer of talc, with mines and processing plants located in Europe, North America, Australia, and East Asia. The Luzenac Group has been a wholly owned subsidiary of the Rio Tinto...

, a French-based subsidiary of the mining giant Rio Tinto Group
Rio Tinto Group
The Rio Tinto Group is a diversified, British-Australian, multinational mining and resources group with headquarters in London and Melbourne. The company was founded in 1873, when a multinational consortium of investors purchased a mine complex on the Rio Tinto river, in Huelva, Spain from the...

, the mine is the oldest and most productive talc mine in the southern hemisphere, and the second-most productive talc mine in the world, with recent annual production of 240,000 tonne
Tonne
The tonne, known as the metric ton in the US , often put pleonastically as "metric tonne" to avoid confusion with ton, is a metric system unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. The tonne is not an International System of Units unit, but is accepted for use with the SI...

s. Rio Tinto acquired the mine in 2001 from the Western Mining Corporation for US$ 27.8 million.
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