*This is an abstract only. No full paper is available for this abstract.* Nautilus Minerals (Nautilus) is a sea floor resource exploration and development company that plans to commercially explore the ocean floor for copper-, gold-, silver- and zinc-rich sea floor massive sulfide (SMS) deposits. Nautilus is currently focused on developing its Solwara 1 project in the territorial waters of Papua New Guinea (PNG) at a water depth of approximately 1700 m. The company has received both the mining lease and environmental permit for its Solwara 1 project from the Government of PNG.The Solwara 1 production system will employ remotely controlled sea floor production tools to cut and collect the SMS deposits. A riser and lifting system will lift the mineralised material to the surface as a slurry, and a floating, dynamically positioned production support vessel will act as the surface base from which all production operations are supported. The presentation addresses the evolution of the design of the deepwater subsea equipment and mining operations to extract these high-grade sulfide deposits from the sea floor with the potential to extend this to water depths of 2500 m.The technology used in the project relies heavily on the offshore industry for subsea trenching, drilling operations and production riser technology; the dredging industry for slurry handling and pumping; the onshore mining industry for cutting and excavation; and the marine industry for vessel-related disciplines. Once complete, Nautilus' sea floor production system has the potential to open a new frontier of resource development as land-based mineral deposits are depleted and the cost of development and extraction continues to rise with falling grades.CITATION:Berndt, R, 2015. The Solwara 1 deepwater mining project, in Proceedings Third International Future Mining Conference, pp 217-218 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).