THE number of voluntary redundancies at George Fisher were higher than Glencore anticipated.
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Executive general manager for Glencore’s North Queensland zinc assets Denis Hamel provided updated figures on local job losses when he spoke at the Mount Isa Mines’ community consultation meeting held Wednesday night.
About 224 jobs were lost in Mount Isa as a result of the company’s decision to cut its total annual zinc production by 500,000 tonnes as a result of global market prices.
There were 193 voluntary redundancies and 37 formal redundancies in Mount Isa.
Mr Hamel said the company would continue to review deployment opportunities for formal redundancies within the company.
Seven Mount Isa employees had been redeployed so far.
535 jobs from Glencore zinc mines in Australia including the Lady Loretta mine in the North West region, and from McArthur River in the Northern Territory.
Lady Loretta’s operations were suspended with 136 redundancies made and 78 phased out.
Eight employees remain on site to maintain it and another 11 employees have been given temporary roles at the company’s Mount Isa operations.
However, George Fisher was still producing more zinc than it had before upgrades were completed in May, Mr Hamel said.
And the company aimed to eventually return production to what it was.
“We are going to restart the operation and ramp up the production when we are confident the recovery is sustainable, when the market is in balance” he said.
In June Glencore zinc chief operating officer Greg Ashe said the company spent a billion dollars investing in its assets such as George Fisher to capitalise on projected increases in the market.
We are going to restart the operation and ramp up the production when we are confident the recovery is sustainable.
- Denis Hamel
The closure of MMG’s Century Mine this year was expected to make zinc prices more favourable for miners such as Glencore.
Mr Hamel said such projected increases were going to take time despite positive signs in the industry suggesting inventories of zinc was reducing slightly.
When asked how long he expected the market to be favourable for Glencore, he said “I would like to know that answer.
“We expect it’s going to be months, not weeks.
“We need to look at zinc at a global sense and what we have seen is a reduction in the demand in China, and not as much growth as we expected,” Mr Hamel said.
