South Australia is targeting to increase by eight times its iron ore exports through the development of the $5-billion Braemar Bulk Export Project.

The venture aims to link upper Spencer Gulf to iron ore resources in the state's north-east, including four underground iron ore slurry pipelines, roads, a power transmission network, fibre optic communications and four water pipelines.

Besides these infrastructures, there is also a proposed floating processing storage and offloading facility in Spencer Gulf, located four kilometers from the coast. With these facilities, the corridor would make available low-cost high-volume export solution to ferry iron ore to the port, said SA Infrastructure and Mineral Resources Minister Tom Koutsantonis.

The minister said that the project, when fully developed, has the potential to boost SA's iron ore concentrate export to over 100 million tonnes annually from 12 million.

In just ten years Fortescue Metals Group has established itself as a reliable mainstream iron ore supplier to the Chinese steel industry and other emerging markets in Asia. (Source: Fortescue Metals Group)

The project was given major development status.

However, a potential barrier that the project proponents would have to hurdle is that the corridor would pass through pastoral land and would need to install slurry pipelines to move the ore.

"It will be up to the people proposing the project to make arrangement for access to relevant land, but this is the approval process so we're now going to go through an environmental impact process and various other processes to make sure this is an appropriate project to get a final sign-off," said SA Deputy Premier and Planning Minister John Rau.