Still life in mine

Northern Grampians Shire leaders are celebrating significant progress at Stawell Gold Mine set to create jobs, boost the region’s economy and potentially cement the historic mining town on the international map.

Mayor Tony Driscoll said he was thrilled to see a mine refurbishment project start to pay dividends after a tumultuous few years, which included the suspension of underground mining in December 2016.

“We don’t want to dwell on the past too much but 150 jobs were guillotined by the previous owners, which was obviously devastating for the Stawell community,” he said.

“Since Arete Capital Partners acquired a 100 percent controlling interest in Stawell Gold Mine at the end of last year, things have started to look up.

“The new company is very proactive and is already putting money into the site, doing up amenities blocks and completing maintenance that was necessary after the site was left alone for a while.

“Employment has increased and further potential for an increase in jobs is fantastic.

“Where there is life, there is hope and this is wonderful for our region.”

Mine general manager Troy Cole said company leaders were confident of returning to mining operations following a successful exploration period. “After exploration over the past seven months we’re looking to start the next stage of the mine’s redevelopment,” he said.

“Recruiting further staff will be the next step and then we’re looking to commence our operations again next year.”

The Stawell mine employed between 10 and 15 people during a ‘care and maintenance phase’ following the sus- pension of underground operations. Mr Cole said the mine had a current workforce of 64, including Stawell Gold Mine staff and diamond drilling contractors.

“We’ve been slowly building up our workforce throughout the year while doing refurbishment work on our infrastructure,” he said.

“We’ve just got to the stage where we’ve made the decision to push ahead on improving our mills and mine fleets.”

Mr Cole said mine leaders would look to employ between 100 and 120 staff by the end of the year.

“If all goes well, we would like to increase that workforce to 140 to 150 by the middle of next year,” he said.

“The recruitment process will be a big job and an exciting one.

“I’ve been through the rollercoaster of activities with different owners. At some times you get investment, sometimes you don’t. It’s the nature of the industry.”

Mr Cole said investment of more than $30-million would be pumped into the mine’s next start-up phase in the next 12 months.

“It is not a small investment and we will look to further significant investments after that,” he said.

“We have good private backing through the Arete group,” Mr Cole said.

He said recent findings would form the basis of a new business model.

“I think it will present a good business case,” he said.

“Our production profile will include 450,000 tonnes of ore in the first year. In the following year we’re looking to increase to 600,000 tonnes of ore, and 800,000 after that.

“We’re getting in there and having a go and we’ll scale it up as we learn more.”

Mr Cole said a former controversial Stawell Gold Mines plan to open-cut mine Big Hill was not on the table.

“When Arete Capital Partners took over they stated at the time they had no intention to do Big Hill at all,” he said.

“Underground operations are still the intent of any investment and we stand by that statement.”

Mr Cole said despite his excitement about the new breath of life, it was still early days.

“Given the energy over the past year or so we’ve been flying under the radar for a little bit until we were ready to announce it,” he said.

“This is the first time we’ve really talked about it. It is happening, it is exciting and more information will follow as we start the recruitment process.”

Underground lab

The return of mining operations is also good news for leaders of a Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory.

The project, the first of its kind in the southern hemisphere, stalled in 2016 following changes to mine ownership.

A team of scientists led by University of Melbourne Professor Elisabetta Barberio plans to use the mine’s underground environment in the international search to find ‘dark matter’.

Professor Barberio said project leaders were frustrated by delays caused by changes in mine ownership but were confident their new partnership with Arete would come to fruition.

“We always believed it would still happen but it was a matter of the timeline,” she said.

“When Arete took over, we signed a head of agreement in February to continue the partnership.

“We finally have the green light and stability to start the lab and we’re hoping we can start excavation later this year or early next year.”

Professor Barberio said project leaders were working on a business case and budget process and she hoped the project would be up and running by the end of next year.

“The majority of matter in the universe is unknown. The earth, sun and stars are made up of matter that we know – atoms – but we only know five percent of the stuff in our universe,” she said.

“The other matter, the unknown, we call ‘dark matter’ because we can’t see it. We don’t know what it is.

“We want to know what it is and to find out, we have to do some very sensitive experiments.

“Finding dark matter is a high priority in our field.”

Professor Barberio said Stawell was already a talking point in the international science community.

Cr Driscoll said there was plenty of regional, statewide and even national interest in the dark matter laboratory.

“It has international implications and certainly has the potential to put Stawell and the Northern Grampians region firmly on the map,” he said.

“The council and the community are very supportive of the arrangement between the university and the mine owners and are very hopeful work on the laboratory will progress sooner rather than later.”