Glencore has reached 10 years without a lost time injury (LTI) at the Mangoola thermal coal handling and preparation plant (CHPP) in New South Wales.
The company credited this achievement to contractors who performed regular maintenance work safely, sometimes alongside 150 trainees and other technicians.
Glencore’s maintenance hours at Mangoola totalled more than 500,000 hours during the past 10 years ended January.
This excludes daily CHPP processing, corrective maintenance and stockpile dozer operations.
The safety performance also comes despite 16 frontline employees joining the operation with virtually no experience in operating and maintaining a CHPP a decade ago.
Mangoola CHPP manager Chris March said they were charged with the start-up and operation of a class-leading asset.
“At the time, nobody was entirely sure just how they would ‘make this happen’. Yet on reflection, it was never in doubt,” he said.
Mangoola open cut operations manager Nick Slatter added: “Rarely did you hear of industrial workplaces like Mangoola CHPP reaching such a remarkable safety record as 10 years LTI free.
“It is really a credit to the entire CHPP team including our many contract maintenance partners who have been part of this story.”
Glencore has mined over 100 million tonnes of Mangoola’s coal reserve over 10 years of operation.
The company secured an approval from the New South Wales Independent Planning Commission earlier this week to develop a new open cut mining area at Mangoola.
This will allow an extra 52 million tonnes of run-of-mine coal to be extracted over eight years.
The Mangoola CHPP claimed the titles the National Group Mine of the Year, the SEW Eurodrive Coal Mine of the Year and the Flexco Excellence in Mine Safety, OH&S award, at the Australian Mining Prospect Awards in 2019.