Anglo American has yet to make a final decision on whether to proceed with the Woodsmith potash mine development in Yorkshire despite spending billions on the fertiliser project.
The FTSE 100 mining giant spent US$641 million on the site near Whitby in 2023 to follow US$522 million in 2022, having acquired it as part of the £405 million Sirius Minerals takeover in 2020.
A further US$900 million has been earmarked for 2024, most of which would go on shaft sinking and tunnel boring, Anglo said in its annual results, down from US$1 billion it had indicated when sharing mid-term spending plans in December.
Woodsmith, if completed, will be a major feat of engineering, with effectively a motorway being built deep underground to transport polyhalite fertiliser from the mine to a new dock on Teesside.
Progress has been steady over the past twelve months Anglo said, with the service shaft now at a depth of 745m and the production shaft at 510m.
This year will see slower progress due to harder rock and the possibility of hitting water fissures.
A 3-4 month maintenance outage is also planned to allow connection between the tunnel and the final intermediate shaft to provide access and ventilation.
On the road, the mineral transport tunnel (MTS) has now reached 27.5 km of the planned 37 km.
Alongside the infrastructure, Anglo added it is optimising the Woodsmith mine plan to allow for a higher production capacity and to "maximise the value" of what is expected to be a multi-decade life span.
Even with all the work carried out so far, the project would be “submitted for a board approval decision on Full Notice to Proceed in the first half of 2025 following the conclusion of this study programme," said its statement.