As flooding continues to wreak havoc by NSW’s far west, one mining firm is experiencing vital losses because of drastic cuts to haulage.
Key factors:
- Important flooding has induced haulage points throughout NSW’s far west
- There was a large downsizing of the variety of mining vehicles on the roads
- It’s unknown when the roads will return to regular capability
Tronox Australia’s operation within the state’s far west embody a base in Damaged Hill and websites close to Ivanhoe and Balranald.
Though flooding has had minimal influence on the operations on the Atlas-Campaspe mine itself, the sheer extent of the injury to the roads has induced issues shifting the products to Damaged Hill.
The haulage vehicles would usually use the Balranald-Ivanhoe Highway to maneuver the mineral sand to the Silver Metropolis however giant components of the highway stay inundated.
Trucking runs scaled again
Nonetheless, the foremost water issues have induced the corporate to make use of a diverted route the place they don’t have the approval to move the identical quantity of products.
Website director for Japanese Operations Peter Collins mentioned whereas the corporate was grateful to have secured an alternate route, there was nonetheless a financial loss.
“Our authorized route, which is by Ivanhoe, our approvals are 35 loaded vehicles a day and 75 tonnes a truck,” he mentioned.
“The choice route — that is a most of 20 loaded vehicles a day at 50 tonnes.
“The variety of vehicles we are able to transfer is decrease and the load per truck is decrease, it’s a non permanent resolution solely.”
Mr Collins mentioned the distinction in transport was “clearly” costing the corporate extra however mentioned the issue wouldn’t final eternally.
“It does price extra to run an extended route and to run a smaller pay rip load,” he mentioned.
“The opposite massive influence is that the smaller payloads imply for a given quantity we have to do extra truck actions and that is extra gas burn and extra interplay of vehicles on the highway.”
No finish in sight
The positioning supervisor mentioned fortunately, each the Ginkgo mine and the rail service the corporate used to move product to Western Australia had not been affected by the pure catastrophe.
Nonetheless, with no sign of ending earlier than the roads clear up he mentioned there it was troublesome to foretell how lengthy these monetary losses would drag on.
“The highway has been shut to heavy autos since October and we aren’t seeing a lower within the quantity of water,” Mr Collins mentioned.
“In reality, there are extra areas now impacted by water over the roads and that is the truth of it.
“We wish to suppose will probably be later this 12 months however till the water actually recedes …it’s the how lengthy is a bit of string query, sadly.”
