PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Coal miner New Hope Group has started the process of reducing staffing levels by 150 at its New Acland mine, in Queensland, as the company continued to await approval for the Stage 3 expansion.
New Acland GM Dave O’Dwyer said the difficult process of notifying the individual workers started Monday afternoon, with New Acland management holding one-on-one meetings with staff.
“The past 24 hours has been extremely tough, particularly for the affected workers and their families,” O’Dwyer said.
“The redundancies have also taken a huge toll on those remaining at New Acland. Specialists, including counsellors have been on site for the past 24 hours, supporting the entire workforce through this extremely difficult time.”
O’Dwyer has again called on the Queensland government to immediately approve the Stage 3 expansion to prevent any further job losses.
New Hope subsidiary New Acland Coal currently operates the existing New Acland mine as a 4.8-million-tonne-a-year opencut coal mine, however, the mine’s reserves are depleted. The Stage 3 expansion project will increase the mine’s yearly output to 7.5-million tonnes and will extend the operation’s life by some 12 years beyond the current end-date of mid-2020.