Community & Business
17 April, 2024
New frontier for mine
New Acland Mine has begun work on the Willeroo Pit after the completion of the Lagoon Creek Crossing.
The achievement comes less than five months after New Hope Group extracted first coal from the Queensland Government approved Stage 3 site.
New Acland Mine General Manager, Dave O’Dwyer said more than a dozen local subcontractors and suppliers including Coops Queensland, MinStaff Survey Toowoomba, Boral Oakey, Black Toyota Oakey, Loughlin Crane Hire and the Oakey Motor Inn played an essential role in building the crossing and supporting the workforce.
“Together with head contractor, Pentacon, we promised to employ local contractors and workers, and that’s exactly who we sourced to build the Lagoon Creek Crossing,” Mr O’Dwyer said.
“We’re proud to be a leading employer in the region, by offering well-paid, local jobs to hard-working Queenslanders.
“For the past 17 years we’ve been talking about Stage 3, and now we’re finally getting on with the job, first by extracting and shipping coal, and now by constructing essential infrastructure projects so the Stage 3 expansion can continue.
“The latest milestone validates the efforts of so many workers and community leaders, who stood beside New Hope Group as we secured all the necessary Stage 3 approvals from the Queensland Government.”
Business owner David Cooper from Coops Construction said that his company had been working around the mine site every week for months on end since Stage 3 started.
“We’ve been utilised constantly here,” he said.
“There’s an endless list of people getting the flow-on effect from it.”
“We’ve become a go-to business,”Mr Cooper said.
“A lot of people applying for a position or an expression of interest.”
Paul Cains from Pentecon acknowledged the work of local suppliers Boral from Oakey, Wagners from Toowoomba, Protech and Brooks Hire.
Mine General Manger Dave O’Dwyer said the crossing would act as a high water culvert for flood mitigation for New Acland.
“The crossing’s here so we can get across in wet weather,” he said.
“The team from Pentecon has been working for the last couple of months and it’s looking fabulous,
“The concrete’s in, the approaches are in, and we’re champing at the bit to get across here.
“This is the first big civil works we’ve done.
“It allows us to expand and take the next step.
“We can bring more people on, it’ll mean more jobs and more people on site.”
The Crossing enables mine workers to cross in low level flows.
It has been constructed by Toowoomba engineering firm Kehoe Myers to enable fish to pass through the bridge, with a koala corridor nearby.
“It’s a real marvel,” Mr O’Dwyer said.
The project will also move work away from the former township of Acland and
its one remaining resident Glen Beutel.
Currently, New Acland Mine has 150 workers on-site and around 10 trains a week are travelling from Jondaryan to Brisbane.
The company’s eventual aim is to produce 5 million tonnes of coal a year.
