MOUNT Isa Mines (MIM) revealed it has increased production at its copper, zinc and lead operations in 2013, even after a tough year.
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More than 100 residents turned out at the John Middleton Centre tonight to have their questions answered at the community information session and raised everything from where to apply for jobs for at the mine’s growing zinc operations to questions about whether the Mount Isa Open Pit project was ever going to be back on the agenda.
MIM Copper Operations chief operating officer Steve de Kruijff started the meeting on a positive note, reporting copper anode production was up 19 percent to 150,600 tonnes compared to the same period last year.
The company’s zinc operations also experienced a “growth spurt” in 2013.
Glencore Xstrata Zinc Australia chief operating officer Brian Hearne announced a six per cent increase in zinc production and said the expansion of George Fisher Mine to produce 4.5 million tonnes per annum was expected to finish by June 2014.
“We're looking at how we can develop those (George Fisher and Lady Loretta Mine), get better returns and basically use up all the resources we've got in an efficient way so we can make the most money from our shareholders who employ local people,” he said.
The duo confirmed that the Mount Isa Open Pit project was still off the table and wasn’t economically viable for MIM at the moment but they did acknowledge that those circumstances could change.
In this latest update the closure date for the copper smelter also remained at 2016.
Mr de Kruijff said the company continued to employ around 3,600 people and 1,100 contractors for capital projects and other developments in the region and regardless of the merger would continue to operate as Mount Isa Mines traditionally had.
“We remain Mount Isa Mines and we're committed to local relationships,” he said.
Job Futures
The effect of the Glencore Xstrata merger on other areas of business at MIM was a topic up for discussion on the night.
Although he refused to put a specific number on the amount jobs lost during the company’s recent internal review, Mr de Kruijff said there had been some redundancies but they were fairly minor.
“We have to maintain our viability and that’s through improving productivity, reducing our cost base in a global market and we continue to review our businesses to make sure we remain sustainable,” he said.
“We need to make sure our maintenance programs are proactive, we're getting the highest utilisation out of our equipment and making sure our workforce is at the right size for what we're producing.”
In contrast to this, Mr Hearne said as zinc projects ramped up MIM it was actively recruiting for people across its sites and 62 positions were available for skilled people to apply for right now.
Xstrata Skills Centre
An announcement this year that MIM would take on only six apprentices in 2014, down from 52 this year, was a concern for some but Mr de Kruijff said the mine’s apprentice intake was at an all-time high.
“One of the things that drives a high intake of apprentices is when we have a high turnover in the industry and we lose a lot of tradespeople,” he said.
“We lost a lot of people about three years ago so we’ve beefed it right up now to levels that is higher than we need. We’ll have to evaluate that on a yearly basis.”
He also announced that the six apprentices hired for 2014 would be drawn from a pool of high school students who completed work experience.
In a change from previous years, he said the first year apprentices selected would be embedded straight into the workplace.
Community confidence
A woman in the crowd said this community information session was the best thing MIM had done for the town since its merge with Glencore and said she’d like to see the mine keep the business community in the loop.
“As you are trying to keep profitable, we as business people on the city side are also trying to keep our business running,” she said.
“In the last six months we've had very little comment from Glencore and we've been duly affected by that.”
Mr de Kruijff said he would have liked to have held the information session weeks ago but the work to figure out what the organisation and operations would look like past 2013 was still going.
“It’s been a very busy time for us to be clear on what our strategic intent is for this operation, making sure we understand it ourselves and get that behind it,” he said.
“That’s probably why we haven’t spoken a little bit more. But, we’re here and we’re going to make sure we keep our engagement going with the community and people in the North West.”
Environmental changes met
MIM proudly announced the mine had reduced its sulphur emissions by 61 percent since 2011 and were in line to meet a reduction of 85 per cent by 2017 after the closure of the copper smelter in 2016.
Residents will also have access to the latest information from air quality monitoring station through MIM’s new website where the data sent to the Queensland Government will be posted regularly for public access.
Mr de Kruijff said water consumption was also reduced by 20 percent across MIM’s operation in 2013 as measures to re-use process water instead of fresh water were put in place.
He said work to design dams and pump stations to ensure storm water captured on-site was re-used was ongoing.
Investment in the North West
Tonight’s information session publicised MIM’s $554 million contribution to the North Queensland economy by meeting its company policy to source consumables locally.
The investment of $2 million into 63 community-based events this year was welcomed by the crowd who broke out into applause after Mount Isa man Ray Dank told the forum MIM had doubled its contribution to his annual Bow Tie Day efforts – a fundraiser for muscular dystrophy research.
