Macmahon has a strong mining division and is the third-largest underground miner in Australia and is in the top five among surface miners.

After a difficult few months, Macmahon was keen to showcase its work on the $A700 million Tropicana gold project in Western Australia on a site visit there last week, which was new chief executive Ross Carroll’s first trip to the project.

The company was awarded the $900 million mining contract, encompassing mine planning, drill and blast, load and haul, crusher feed and associated works over the 10-year life-of-mine.

It is an alliance contract, whereby Macmahon will work closely with 70% owner and project manager AngloGold Ashanti.

Mining at the project began in July and will peak at around 60 million tonnes per annum around 12 months into the operation.

To date, 1.5 bank cubic metres of waste and vegetation has been mined and in 85,000 man hours, there have been no injuries recorded.

A new workshop has been built and Macmahon expects to move in during the first week of November.

There are 130 Macmahon personnel onsite now but that number will swell to 250 once full production begins.

“With what’s going on in the mining industry now is going to make it easier to recruit,” Carroll said.

The fleet

Macmahon will invest around $130 million in the mining fleet, minor equipment and infrastructure over the first three years of the contract.

There will eventually be 15 Caterpillar 793F trucks onsite which cost $5 million apiece.

The first mining fleet comprises five 793F Caterpillar 240-tonne trucks, which were assembled in Kalgoorlie at Cat distributor WesTrac’s facility there due to overcapacity in its Perth workshops.

It was the largest equipment ever to be assembled in the Goldfields region.

Once assembled, the trucks were transported 330km to Tropicana over a three-week period.

Three separate journeys were made with the chassis and trays transported separately before reassembly onsite.

A Cat 6040 excavator, a Cat 24M grader and a Cat MD6240 drill have also been delivered to site.

In fact, in an Australian first, all of the new equipment purchased for the project is Cat.

WesTrac chief operating officer Donald James said it could even represent the first all-Cat fleet in the world.

James said the company was thrilled to be involved with the first greenfields start-up project in quite some time.

The second and third fleets will be delivered to site in May and June next year.

Automation

Tropicana general manager Duncan Gibbs said the company was looking at the potential for automation at the new mine and it would be a strategic focus.

AngloGold already uses some automation in South Africa and Brazil.

While the fleet at Tropicana won’t be completely automated, there is the scope down the track to do so.

Carroll said working with a blue-chip customer like AngloGold allowed Macmahon the opportunity to automate and advance its technology, which would further strengthen its already strong relationship with WesTrac through the use of the all-Cat fleet.

“There are a lot of advantages to that when it comes to automation,” he said.

He added that Macmahon planned to be a leader in automation.

“Rio [Tinto] is obviously ahead but we aim to be a fast follower,” Carroll said.

WesTrac contract mining manager Cameron Callaway said the fleet would use all the facets of the Cat MineStar system except complete autonomy.

“The exciting thing about this project is we’re supplying a lot of the baseline technology,” he said.

Fleet information would be sent to Perth, allowing WesTrac to feed it back to Macmahon for maintenance purposes.

The equipment has enabling technologies, such as sensors on the drills to minimise dilution, and radars and cameras on trucks to minimise the risk of accidents between heavy and light vehicles.

“To a degree it’s a level of automation with a man still behind the wheel,” Callaway said.

“We’re an end-to-end solution. We’re not just selling the gear to Ross.”

Productivity was likely to be the biggest advantage to automation.

“What we’re really trying to do is take out the variability to improve productivity,” Gibbs said.

For example, Carroll said haul roads were probably the single biggest area where Macmahon could lose productivity but the Cat AccuGrade grade control system on the 24M allowed operators to fill with increased accuracy.

Automation could also reduce costs.

Carroll pointed out that each truck cost $5 million and in Australia, it would cost around $1 million in wages for one truck driver.

In Mongolia, where the company also operated, a truck driver would only cost $10,000 a year.

“So you see why we have these cost issues in Australia,” Carroll said.

AngloGold is completing studies into a potential underground operation and Gibbs admitted he expected Macmahon to be at Tropicana longer than 10 years.

“With all things going well, we certainly think we’d be well-placed to win that work,” Carroll said.

This article first appeared in ILN's sister publication MiningNews.net.