Alliance Aviation Services will continue to fly workers in and out of St Barbara’s Leonora gold operations in Western Australia after the two companies agreed to extend the air charter services contract for another three years.

Alliance has been providing these fly in/fly out services to St Barbara since 2012 and will continue to arrange eight flights per week between Perth and Leonora.

Lee Schofield, Chief Executive Officer for Alliance, said the flexibility of Alliance’s fleet, “together with industry leading on time performance, greatly assisted Alliance in retaining this contract”.

This is the fifth contract Alliance has retained in a “selective tender process” over the past 12 months. Recently, Alliance received a potential five-year extension with Incitec Pivot for services to its Phosphate Hill operations in northwest Queensland.

St Barbara’s Gwalia mine is just 3 km south of Leonora in Western Australia. It produced 268,000 ounces of gold at an all-in sustaining cost of A$891 per ounce in the 12 months to the end of June. The company is currently in the process of evaluating a deep underground extension to the mine, which could see operations continue until the end of St Barbara’s 2013 financial year.