The four-year, $95 million contract includes a one-year option to extend the agreement to five years.

Barminco will provide all underground mining services, including mine development and production.

They will employ around 65 staff at the project and is already mobilising at the site ahead of an anticipated start of operations next month.

Barminco chief executive officer Paul Muller said the contract added to the strong platform of projects being delivered across the business.

“We look forward to working closely with the Round Oak team as the Mount Colin mine heads into underground production after open-cut mining ended in 2015,” Mr Muller said.

“This long-term contract adds to our presence in north-west Queensland, having operated at the nearby Dugald River zinc project for more than six years.”

Round Oak, formerly known as CopperChem, expects the mine to employ 70-80 people and have a lifespan of about four years.

CEO Rob Cooper said the mine portal would be developed into the wall of the Mount Colin open-cut, which was last mined about three and a half years ago.

“There is about a kilometre of decline development to access the ore body at the first production level,” Mr Cooper said.

“While we’ll access development ore within the first six months, we expect it will be almost 12 months before first stope production and about two years to get the mine to steady state production at a rate of 400,000 tonnes per year.”

The underground project contains an ore reserve of 1.3Mt at an average grade of 2.9 per cent copper and 0.4g/t gold.

Mr Cooper said Round Oak had a toll treatment agreement with Glencore for the ore, which would go to the Ernest Henry operation for processing.