The increasingly contentious issue of fly-in fly-out (FIFO) manning to service remote mines has been supported by Oz Minerals – owner and operator of the Prominent Hill copper-gold mine in South Australia’s far north. Addressing the Paydirt 2012 South Australian Resources Energy & Investment Conference in Adelaide, Oz Minerals’ Managing Director, Terry Burgess, said FIFO had got a lot of bad press “but many people actually really like it. Some 80% of our Prominent Hill workforce live and work in South Australia so they have a mining career with a South Australian lifestyle,” Burgess said.“Most of our employees and most of our contractors like and are well suited to our eight day on six day off fly-in fly-out cycle for Prominent Hill and we are doing a lot of work to enhance and encourage that experience,” he said.
“We want the process to be as pleasant and possible and recently introduced for example, WiFi across our village to enable telephone calls to family members every night.
“FIFO today is very different from the style of mining that people think is simply sitting in a pub drinking until the next shift commences. The mining industry is making major changes and we need to educate the public about this so that our workforce is content and provides a right balance of career opportunity and happy home life.”
Oz Minerals this month introduced its first FIFO jet service from Adelaide to Prominent Hill – a move Burgess said that had cut flying time to one hour – a much more appealing scenario for employees and families.
On Prominent Hill, Oz Minerals says it expects some escalation in its copper-gold production costs this year from the mine as the operation moves increasingly to a dual open-pit and underground mining operation. Burgess said he anticipated 2012 production costs would be in the range of $1.00-1.10/lb. This compared with last year’s costs at Prominent Hill of around $0.70/lb.
“This is a typical cost scenario being faced now by many miners,” Burgess said, “but does in part reflect our increasing work to make the transition to underground mining on a more permanent, large scale compared to our underground mine start up in January this year,” he said.
Burgess said he expected Prominent Hill’s open pit to be exhausted between 2017 and 2018. The immediate Prominent Hill exploration focus has now turned to the underground area beneath the open pit as well as the 7,000 km2 region around the mine.
The company is spending A$70 million on exploration around Prominent Hill this year on its own ground and in joint venture with IMX Resources, to add to its regional copper-gold resource. At least 40-50 drill targets have been identified to date from this work.