Jobs to go as Unity to close Henty Gold Mine (Tassie)

[loamer]

At least 150 workers are expected to lose their jobs at Tasmania's Henty gold mine, as owner Unity Mining (ASX:UML) confirmed Tuesday that it will shut the operation by the end of 2015. Unity deemed the mine no longer feasible after reviewing its first-quarter operational performance.

Opened in 1996, the Henty mine was thought viable for only four years. It was still operating 13 years later, having produced about 1.2 million ounces of gold.

 

[Guest]

Sad state of the mining game at the moment. The axe is dangling over us all & I heard that 500 jobs were to be cut in the South Coast coal industry last week after about the same figure in the Hunter Valley recently.

 

[loamer]

This week from Mining Digest and yes its a sad state of affairs.

Between 50,000 and 75,000 mining jobs will be lost in Australia over the next couple of years as the industry's US$427 billion (A$450bn) investment on new capacity slows, research by the ANZ bank released on Wednesday shows. According to the bank, the cuts will occur because the sector is switching from the job-heavy construction stage to the operational phase, which requires fewer workers.

 

[HeadsUp]

something to contemplate

Mongolia has potentially more resources than Australia does.

while they have only recently begun to aggressively uptick their exploration and mine development , Mongolians are fast on the uptake and aggressive in business.

They are just a skip across the border with China.

They are not strangled by over the top insane OHS regulations like we are

They have minimal environmental regulations except when they want to extract a bribe

They dont have grossly incompetant neanderthal politicians

They dont have unions destroying production in return for bribes

So.......

what is the future of the Australian mining sector ?

 

[Couna]

Maules mine in the Hunter had 100 jobs going , they had 1100 applicants applying!!
Not good
But on the brighter side they are still mining , still got to move the dirt

 

[Goldpick]

BHP have also shed many jobs, but most are just at the end of contacts from infrastructure upgrades, and not permanent staff. Rio have aready done a fair bit of shedding over the last year or two. Hopefully the exploration sector picks up towards the end of this year, I am starting to get a few bits of work here and there, but things are still pretty quiet as a whole.

I can't see things improving a hell of a lot until more until more overseas investment is made in the sector. That has its upsides and downsides though, especially if you have a chinese owned mine run by chinese, and only employing chinese. I came across a small exploration company the other day, the guys were nice enough, but none of them were Australian, all from china or africa, none of them permanent Australian residents, and paid very poorly.

 

[dwt]

switching from the job-heavy construction stage to the operational phase, which requires fewer workers.

This is pretty standard,(for hard rock underground) the "development" or "construction phase" always needs more workers and machinery than the "production" side.Rant begins.....
One of the biggest problems i see in mining today is all of these little enterprises that popped up and ran people through so called "mine qualification" training, then we seen an influx of underskilled, so called mine trained, high income earners, suddenly end up without a job when the boom's over trying to get work at a lifestyle they are used to of 90-120k a year.
The biggest issue i see accross the various sites i have worked at is ATTITUDE, there is a lot (and not eveyone) a lot of pi## poor attitude out there from mine workers who think they are hard done buy, that they should be on a higher wicket than the next guy, and these people are usually the one's sooking about there is not enough coffee in the crib room, the aircon dosnt work properly, waa waa waa 8.(, then throw in the over educated under expierenced supervisor, with the "lets just get the job done" or "im a tonnes man" attidude, then you will see a rise in incidents with MTI's and LTI's, these cost company's millions.
I feel for the miner's that are out of work with job cut backs and are willing to have a real dip, i've been there before, and to the others that are there just for the coin side and dont care about anything else...............move on and free that spot up for people wanting to have a fair dinkum crack, then watch the mining boom really kick off.
Rant over...

 

[Coyote]

I started working at the Henty Gold mine on April 1st 1996 as the Gold room operator. Commissioned the strip circuit and goldroom. Progressively worked my way up through the ranks to Ore processing manager before leaving 6.5 years later in 2002.
Great place and loved my time there. Is always a sad moment when you here this, but it is mining. Yes Loamer, it only had a 4.5 year life when it started.
I can remember a couple of days that the head grade coming into the plant was over 100 grams/tonne, much to our horror the tail grade was 8 g/t.
Budget was ounce dirt. 30 g/t and started milling at 18 tonnes/hour. Only place I have worked where it snowed on Christmas day .
I know a lot of my old mates are still there and I wish them well for their future.

Cliff

 

[HeadsUp]

switching from the job-heavy construction stage to the operational phase, which requires fewer workers.

This is pretty standard,(for hard rock underground) the "development" or "construction phase" always needs more workers and machinery than the "production" side.Rant begins.....
One of the biggest problems i see in mining today is all of these little enterprises that popped up and ran people through so called "mine qualification" training, then we seen an influx of underskilled, so called mine trained, high income earners, suddenly end up without a job when the boom's over trying to get work at a lifestyle they are used to of 90-120k a year.
The biggest issue i see accross the various sites i have worked at is ATTITUDE, there is a lot (and not eveyone) a lot of pi## poor attitude out there from mine workers who think they are hard done buy, that they should be on a higher wicket than the next guy, and these people are usually the one's sooking about there is not enough coffee in the crib room, the aircon dosnt work properly, waa waa waa 8.(, then throw in the over educated under expierenced supervisor, with the "lets just get the job done" or "im a tonnes man" attidude, then you will see a rise in incidents with MTI's and LTI's, these cost company's millions.
I feel for the miner's that are out of work with job cut backs and are willing to have a real dip, i've been there before, and to the others that are there just for the coin side and dont care about anything else...............move on and free that spot up for people wanting to have a fair dinkum crack, then watch the mining boom really kick off.
Rant over...

our mining , gas and oil industry has to , and will go through a pretty big shake up in the years to come.

DWT .... you're way ahead of me on experience in mining processes but my take on what i have seen is that there are a percentage of massively talented people through the industry , and then there were some of the newbies mentioned above , unskilled , unbrained with a bludger attitude .

there had been heads employed in positions trying to do a tradesmans job and failing miserably , doing it at 20 % competancy at 6 times longer than it should have taken but they are the first to go when things get tough.

The cream will get picked and stay at the top ,and hopefully they will be able to train the next generation of school leavers where rare natural talent can be found.

If we are going to compete with other emerging markets though , we need to find ways to reduce production costs through better technology and innovation , that is the key to surviving through the future for us i think