The company looking to site a giant open pit iron ore mine in northern Wisconsin is delaying its application to the DNR amid a global downturn in prices.

Gogebic Taconite had planned to make a formal application to the Department of Natural Resources in the spring of 2015 but is now pushing that back until at least the fall of next year.

The company won't finish all fieldwork this fall and will be forced to conduct additional environmental work next year, according to a report in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

But recent reports on falling iron ore prices may also suggest no rush to move the project forward.

"A bloodbath in iron-ore prices could get much uglier before things turn around," says a report in the Wall Street Journal this week.

Iron ore prices have slumped by nearly 40 per cent this year as the big miners -- BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Fortescue Metals -- ramp up production and China's economy slows down, according to this report from ABC News.

Still, Gogebic Taconite officials have downplayed the ore glut, saying they are looking out decades and are not fixated on current price swings.

"Mining companies aren't looking so much at short-term ore prices as they are at future opportunities," Gogebic consultant David Ward of NorthStar Economics said last year when ore prices were also falling. "This mine was projected to operate over the next 35 or 40 years."