Weld Range

The Weld Range project is Midwest's flagship Direct Shipping Ore (DSO) project. It is located 65 km southwest of Meekatharra and 50 km northwest of Cue in Western Australia. This project is also included in the Sinosteel / Midwest joint venture.

Weld Range includes a confirmed total of 133.4Mt of haematite Mineral Resources (JORC) at 58.5% Fe at a cut off grade of 50% Fe, with grades as high as 66.9% Fe having been recorded. The areas covered by the Mineral Resource estimate have no noteworthy deleterious contaminant elements and have acceptable strip (waste : ore) ratios.

The Weld Range project has significant potential due to high grade outcrops over a total 16 km strike length. The current resource represents only 6 km of the strike length.

Midwest has a significant and accelerated drilling programme at Weld Range aimed at increasing the JORC Mineral Resource. To date Midwest has only substantially explored three key mineralised zones in its Weld Range tenements and considers the unexplored areas offer good potential to expand resources.

Midwest is scheduling to complete its Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS) for Weld Range in December 2008. This PFS will be very close to Definitive Feasibility Study standard, since it forms the agreed basis for formal buy-in negotiations between Midwest and Sinosteel (whereby Sinosteel has an option to acquire up to 50% of the project and form an operating joint venture with Midwest, in return for paying an acceptable value for the asset).

The Weld Range Hematite DSO project is currently the main focus for the Company's strategy of becoming a world class exporter of iron ore, by development of the project's hematite resources. The joint venture agreement with Sinosteel Corporation for the project is extremely promising, with Midwest confident of delineating sufficient resources of iron ore lump and fines at a combined rate to support a DSO at a minimum scale of 15Mt per annum for 15 years.