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PERTH - Newmont Mining, the world's second largest gold producer, says it will slash jobs at two of its major Australian operations amid rising labour and material costs.
Regional group executive of Australia and Asia operations Russell Clark yesterday said jobs at the Jundee and Tamami mines would be lost as the operations were rationalised to fend off rising costs.
"We are conscious of rising costs, we are conscious of skill shortages in this country, and we are currently combining the two milling operations that we have got at the Jundee mine into one such that we can eliminate a bunch of fixed costs as well as a whole raft of people," he told delegates at the Paydirt gold conference. Jundee is located about 400km north of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia.
Clark said the move would reduce costs at the operation but not reduce production.
Jobs are also expected to go at the 400,000 ounce a year Tanami mine in the Northern Territory as a major restructure of the operation is implemented over the coming years.
Newmont is looking at constructing a haulage shaft and building a new processing plant adjacent to the mine as the underground operation progresses deeper.
"Obviously we wouldn't be able to haul from those sorts of depths, so the vision that we have, that we are currently working through is having a haulage shaft, which would significantly reduce the cost of production from underground," he said.
"We'd build a new processing plant adjacent to the mine, we currently have to haul that material 40km.
"We would eliminate about 100 people from this operation while maintaining its production rates."
Newmont produced about 5.9 million ounces from its global operations in 2006.
-AAP
