Published in the February 2010 Australia’s Mining Monthly
In those two months or so Sedgman has made two key managerial appointments, won three major contracts and picked up an Australian Export Award.
Arguably, the biggest win on the contracting side has been $145 million to expand the coal handling and preparation plant at the Lake Vermont mine in Central Queensland. That is through its joint venture with Thiess known, unsurprisingly, as the Thiess Sedgman Joint Venture.
TSJV’s Lake Vermont contract is to design, procure, construct and commission an expansion of the CHPP for mine operator Lake Vermont Resources.
The upgraded CHPP is needed to produce up to 4 million tonnes of additional product coal a year using LVR’s existing train load-out system. This will all be metallurgical coal, the bulk to be hard coking coal and the rest pulverised coal injection product.
TSJV designed the original Lake Vermont CHPP, which was commissioned in 2009.
LVR operates the mine on behalf of the unincorporated Lake Vermont Joint Venture made up of Jellinbah Group (70%), Marubeni Coal (10%), CHR Vermont (10%) and Coranar (10%).
The mine is located about 18 kilometres north east of Dysart.
Another contract win was for an $85 million upgrade to the Bengalla coal handling and preparation plant.
The mine is located about 4 kilometres west of Muswellbrook inNew South Wales’ Hunter Valley region.Once again this contract was won by TSJV.
The upgrade will increase the CHPP’s capacity from 1200 tonnes per hour to 1700tph and is due to be completed in the first quarter of 2012.
TSJV has been carrying out preliminary work on the project since September 2010.
The Bengalla Mining Company runs the mine on behalf of the owners the Bengalla Joint Venture, an unincorporated joint venture between Coal & Allied (40%), Wesfarmers (40%), Taipower (10%) and Mitsui (10%).
Sedgman has had a long association with BMC, having designed and built the original CHPP there in 1999 and upgrading the plant’s feed systems in 2008, chairman Russell Kempnich said.
The other contract the company picked up was for $US31 million worth of work at Energy Resource’s UHG operations in Mongolia.
Part of the work includes $US19 million for the engineering, procurement and construction management works for the second stage of Energy Resources’ CHPP at the UHG mine. The mine is in the South Gobi region of Mongolia.
Sedgman also has been awarded another two contracts there worth $US12 million. One is an operational readiness contract and the other is a three-year deal to manage the UHG1 CHPP. The other is a three-year operations management contract for the UHG1 plant, which is expected to start in the fourth quarter of 2011-12.
While not in the same financial league as the Lake Vermont or Bengalla contracts, the UHG jobs mark Sedgman’s entry into a significant emerging coal region.
This global view helped Sedgman win the Large Services category in the Australian Export Awards.
Besides its work in Mongolia, Sedgman also has operated in Botswana, Chile, Colombia and Mozambique. This included the design and procurement of the world’s largest coal preparation plant, which is being built at Moatize Mine in Mozambique.
On the management front, Sedgman has appointed a new managing director and chief financial officer.
Nick Jukes was announced on December 9 as chief executiveofficer and managing director. His appointment officially started on January 17.
Jukes is a 30-year mining and engineering industry veteran. He held senior roles with Thiess and BHP and had been a non-executive director of Sedgman.
During his time with BHP, Jukes was a project manager at its Gregory Coal mine.
Jukes replaces Mark Read who resigned for “personal reasons”
Read had been leading Sedgman for 2.5 years, having taken the role filled by Peter Hay.
Kempnich stepped into an executive role until Jukes came on board.
The other key management appointment was Ian Poole, who took up the CFO role from December 2, replacing Alan Wigan.
For the past 8 years Poole held senior finance and commercial roles within Rio Tinto Coal Australia and Coal & Allied Industries, another Rio Tinto subsidiary. Prior to that he was finance and administration vice-president for Pasminco.
If what attendees to the Sedgman annual general meeting last year heard is true then these recent contract-win announcements could be the tip of the iceberg.
Kempnich was extremely bullish on the prospects for the company and, indeed, the sector for the 2011 financial year and beyond.
While the bulk of the work Sedgman won was in coal, which admittedly is the company’s heartland, it is sticking to its plans to move into hard rock processing.
“The strategy for infrastructure will be founded on engineering studies and design that will, in time, expand into full project and operational delivery capability,” Kempnich said.
“The initial focus is on port facilities and associated infrastructure.
“Similarly, with iron ore we will create a capability to deliver iron ore processing and materials handling projects within Australia.”
One of the company’s initial metal-processing wins was to build, operate and maintain the crushing plant for Xstrata’s HandlebarHill mine.
