Doric will build 900 accommodation rooms, a camp kitchen and associated facilities to house up to 1350 workers during construction.

Once construction at Karara is complete, a portion of the camp will be dismantled and removed, leaving enough capacity for the 450 workers required during production.

The camp will be located near the old Karara homestead, near the main Karara concentrator and plant.

Gindalbie said the camp would have state-of-the-art facilities.

Meanwhile, the 300-person Lochada camp is nearly complete and will accommodate workers during the early stage of construction, and will later be used to house personnel involved with construction of the rail spur, power line and other associated infrastructure.

Gindalbie said there were 120 workers onsite and two-thirds of the area required for the concentrator has been cleared.

An official ground breaking on Saturday signalled the beginning of construction at the $1.8 billion project.

With production slated to begin in 2011, Karara will initially produce around 8 million tonnes of magnetite concentrate per annum and around 2Mtpa of direct shipping ore.

Shares in Gindalbie rose 2.5c this morning to 97.5c.