WA company sets roots in Mount Isa
Western Australian mine services company RE:GROUP is setting to significantly expand its presence in North-West Queensland.
RE:GROUP has contracts with Austral Resources to deliver mining and haulage services at the Lady Annie project north of Mount Isa.
Austral recently added the Rocklands operation about 17km north of Cloncurry to its balance sheet, having bought it from administrators.
Austral imposed a two-year hiatus to operations to refurbish the crushing circuit and develop projects around the site for feedstock.
RE:GROUP managing director Michael Still said they had established a good relationship with Austral at Lady Annie and would be up to providing services at Rocklands.
RE:GROUP Managing Director Michael Still
“I guess that’s the benefit of the partnership between us and Austral is we’re both the mining contractor and the bulk haulage contractor,” he said.
“And the reason that that’s really important is that you’ve got two groups that are working really closely together.
“Rocklands’ demands include the need for significant trucking and RE:GROUP is pretty innovative.
“We’re already looking at ways to run quad road trains where we electrify the axles of the trailers and reduce fuel emissions in the trucks because we want to ensure that we’re minimising the impact on the environment.
“It could be another 20 trucks on the road. Now 20 trucks is 60 jobs on a two-in-one roster day and night, and that’s significant just for one of the deposits.”
RE:GROUP is currently delivering up to 750,000t a month via its 100t fleet offer and their ultra-quad road trains, running from pit to the Mount Kelly processing plant.
Austral Resources’ work to develop common user process facilities reflected successful models used in Western Australia, Mr Still said.
“We see it in Western Australia where it works really well,” he said.
“We’ve got common user facilities that the government has put together from a port capacity perspective for bulk commodities. What that means is the juniors, the small guys, have a way to get their product to market.
“If I translate that to what’s happening here in Queensland, particularly Mount Isa, and particularly with the Austral story, you’ve got them acquiring the Rocklands asset with their Lady Annie asset.
“All of a sudden you’ve got two sites that can process both forms of copper within a couple hundred kilometres of each other. I think it’s quite exciting.”
The partnership developed with Austral, which promoted safety and helped keep costs down, gave them confidence to invest more in Queensland, Mr Still said.
“We’re ultimately responsible for making the call on what we invest as a business – its significant amounts worth of capital – and need to have the confidence to be repaid and quickly,” he said.
“You can’t do that unless you’ve got a partner that you understand. The benefit of having the last 18 months working together with Austral is we’ve been through some trying times together and we’ve pulled out the other end.
“We’re certainly a lot stronger together as a team.”
Find the article here:
https://industryqld.com.au/wa-company-sets-roots-in-mount-isa/

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