Sandfire Resources has entered into a sales contract with MRI Trading to purchase 50% of direct shipping ore from the DeGrussa copper-gold project in Western Australia.

According to the contract, MRI will supply a maximum of 75,000 dry tons of direct shipping ore to Sandfire, from March 2012, for a period of one year.

The direct shipping ore will be produced from the open pit mining operation, which is scheduled to extract a total of 143,000t of direct shipping ore reserves grading 25.6% copper and 2.5g/t gold containing about 37,000t of copper.

MRI will purchase the direct shipping ore on a cost, insurance and freight basis.

Sandfire has also started negotiations with respect to the sales agreements for the sale of copper concentrate.