“We have had a number of problems but we have now implemented changes to management and to rosters, and also to operational and maintenance strategies, and they are really starting to get the company to move forward,” Cochrane said.
Bounty was initially set up to look at equipment hire and engineering services but that all changed as the business was restructured. It now focuses entirely on mining services and mining contracts in coal.
The company specialises in thin-seam coal mining and is operating at the Aquila Colliery located at Anglo Coal’s German Creek operation in Queensland.
Bounty is also working on a longwall gate road at Bundoora Colliery in German Creek.
Thin-seam mining uses specialised equipment that works with seams of less than 2m.
By using equipment imported from the United States, Bounty extracts coal from the face of thin seams to give value to what was traditionally seen as an uneconomic reserve.
In May Bounty posted an improved production with 1215m of continuous miner production in one week and 620 lost time injury-free days.
Bounty has been working at Aquila for more than two years and this was the highest level of production in a week.
“We are the only contract miner in coal which has a production target in our contract,” Cochrane said.
“This means we are producing about 600,000 tonnes a year. Everyone else is just doing services or gate road development, or various other underground work.”
The improvement was put down to management changes, better maintenance practices and changes to shift rosters.
However, it has not been an easy journey for the contractor.
In 2005 Bounty merged with Western Australia’s Ausmet and relisted on the Australian Securities Exchange as Bounty Industries.
The company had a vision in the exploitation of thin coal seams of less than 1.5m thick that had until recently been left unmined in Australia.
However, difficulties with production rates and losses associated with its subsidiary equipment hire business, Bounty Equipment Leasing, led to poor financial results.
Its half year result to December 2006 saw a loss of $2.7 million on revenues of $9.6 million.
This was a fall from the previous period which posted a profit of $800,000 for revenue of $9.7 million.
After the bad news Bounty’s board embarked on a road to recovery which saw it diversify the number of projects it had and increase the type of work it was taking on.
It negotiated an improved rate with Anglo, a more economic staff roster and extended operations into a new area of the mine.
In December 2006 Bounty was awarded the Bundoora gate road development, which it is still working on.
Earlier this year saw the departure of Bounty’s former chairman Dr Colin Knox, and director Gary Cochrane stepped up after coming to the board in November 2006 as a non-executive director.
In March Bounty secured a new 12-month contract at the Aquila mine to an increased productivity of more than 500,000 tonnes a year and, for the first time in two years, Bounty was in the black.
After management changes at board level and at the Aquila site, Cochrane said the contractor was doing what it set out to do.
“We were hoping to do exactly what we have done, which is improve our performance,” he said.
“We had a very good April, we are having a very good May, we also had a positive cash position on March quarterly so that is the first one the company has had in two years. We are moving well for these two months so far in this quarter.”
The better cash flow was due to an improved mining fleet after major rebuilds to two major haulers, as well as work towards a continuous haulage system. The arch conveyor system is still in the construction phase but will help with Bounty’s productivity.
But where is Bounty heading to in the future?
Cochrane said there were contracts out to tender in the Bowen Basin and also some work in New South Wales that could lead to “significant opportunity” either in gate road development or production for Bounty.
He enthused about the recent good months and was confident in a bid for a new contract at Bundarra.
“We are in a strong position but we can’t say we have a new contract but we are certainly doing quite a bit of work on it,” Cochrane said.
