Copper miner CuDeco Ltd has gained State Government approval for its Rocklands mine, 15km west of Cloncurry. It comes after a 30 year mining lease along with rights to process 3 million tonnes of ore a year for 10 years was granted in late 2011.
Construction begins immediately, with the first of the buildings expecting to arrive in the next week, commencement of stores buildings, heavy vehicle workshops, roadways, ROM pad, dams, creek diversion etc, to commence within the next month. CuDeco plans to award contracts to local Cloncurry-based businesses for concreting, storage buildings and other facilities. A development permit for construction of a ship loader and concentrate storage facility at Port of Townsville was issued earlier this month, to load at a rate of 2000 tonnes an hour and house 400,000 tonnes of concentrate.�
Wayne McCrae, CuDeco chairman and chief executive, said on Friday DERM approval followed six years regulatory and feasibility work, including more than 400,000 metres of drilling �and an outlay of $75 million.
130-160 mining jobs and local contracts to be offered
Townsville`s ATCO Constructions has begun in-factory work on a medical centre and the main administration building, to be delivered in June.
Rocklands mine will employ 130-160 people and staff will live at Cloncurry, where the company holds 60 homes and has let contracts to build more houses.
Mr McCrae said: “We want to support the community and help it to grow, so Rocklands won`t be a FIFO operation.”�
Dump truck and excavator fleets to be expanded
The company also intends to expand its mobile fleet, including dump trucks, to 34 and its 200-tonne excavator fleet to 7 and to trial single 12-hour shifts to give staff more time with their families.
Read more about dump truck training to help you get work in the mines.
Good copper price helps new Cloncurry mine – July 2012
Xstrata commenced an open pit mining project near Cloncurry in north-west Queensland.
Xtstrats’s CEO for northern Queensland, Steve de Kruijiff, says the new Xstrata mine will generate 300 full-time mining jobs and produce 20 million tonnes of copper ore over 5 years.
“We are seeing some areas of the mining commodities slacken off, the coal prices and the iron ore prices have come off a little bit,” he said.
“I still think China has a lot to offer in its growth and I’m quietly confident that copper will maintain a fairly good price.”
Copper mining jobs for Cloncurry
