Safety and sustainability drive operational outcomes, the International Mining and Resources Conference was told today in a presentation by the chief development officer of one of the world’s largest gold mining companies.

Michael Nossal, in a keynote address, told delegates they only had to “look at the conference program or stop and talk to some of the people demonstrating outside to understand how the sustainability message is really affecting everything we do”.

“…It is more and more common that each new project is undergoing higher and higher levels of scrutiny,” Mr Nossal said.

“What that means is that it is more challenging to get a new project up and in particular we have to think about time frames.

“People talk about a licence to operate; we like to think that if we get this right, we have a licence to grow.

“We have to walk into new communities, sit with new governments and set out how we operate and basically pass that test every time we look at moving into a new country.

“But we actually have to deliver on these promises from the very beginning. We have all probably, in this room, been associated with projects that have gone wrong from that first interaction; the first time a geologist walks over a piece of ground.

“We think Newcrest has made significant strides in the past few years. Mainly about being more explicit on our commitments.

“From a business point of view, it is straight forward; if we get this right, we will have the licence to grow.”

He said the company was also proud of its achievements around safety.

The goal was to be achieve zero fatalities and be industry leading for total recordable injuries frequency rate by the end calendar year 2020.

The company has achieved zero fatalities for four years and was industry leading for  total recordable injuries frequency rate .

“There has been significant progress in our lagging indicators, however in safety I like to say we are only as good as our last five minutes,” Mr Nossal said. “It’s a continual struggle and you never give up on something.”

In August the company announced sustainability commitments, include greenhouse gas emissions targets for the first time, pricing carbon emissions into its investment decisions, a catchment-based approach to water management and a commitment to no net loss of biodiversity values for new projects.

“In addition, as part of our commitment to a sustainable gold mining industry we are proud to assist in the development of and to support the World Gold Council’s recently launched Responsible Gold Mining Principles,” Mr Nossal said.

“These are an overarching framework that sets out clear expectations from consumers, investors and the downstream gold supply chain to what constitutes responsible gold mining.”

He said the company’s asset mix – Cadia Valley, NSW; Telfer, WA; Lihir, PNG; Gosowong, Indonesia; Red Chris, Canada; and Golpu, PNG – gave it several attributes that made Newcrest unique. 

“Cadia and Lihir have two of the largest operating gold reserves base in our pier group. This large gold endowment…enables us to be patient and gives us time to make decisions that are aligned to our focus on cash generation and shareholder value,” he said.

“We don’t believe that reserve size or gold production for the sake of it is a proxy for value creation. Instead, we are about safely generating the most cash we can from our existing asset base and sensibly growing our business profitably with a focus on that value creation.

“Being low cost is a key part of that. Our industry is cyclical. It is quite good now but being low cost gives as the best chance of generating cash throughout the cycle.

“Technology and innovation is at the heart of who we are as a company. We will see a lot more technological breakthroughs in the industry and we hope Newcrest is a key part of that.”