Collinsville

The Collinsville open cut black coal mine in the Bowen Basin Region, 80 kilometres south west of Bowen, in Queensland is part of the Newlands Collinsville Abbot Point Joint Venture (NCA JV). It includes the Newlands underground and open cut mining operation, the Collinsville open cut mine and the Abbots Point Coal Terminal. The joint venture partners mine, process and export high quality coal to its domestic and overseas customers. The Collinsville Mine produces both steaming and coking coal. The joint venture partners include; GlencoreXstrata Coal (55 percent), Itochu Coal Resources (35 percent) and Sumitomo (10 percent).

Collinsville Coal Potential Recognised in 1866
The Collinsville coal mining potential was recognised as early as 1866 and the first underground mining operation was established in 1919. Mount Isa Mines (MIM) became involved in 1952 and gained controlling interest in 1972. Xstrata acquired MIM in 2003.

Thiess Awarded Contract for the Life of the Collinsville Mine
Mining contractor Thiess entered into a contract to operate the mine on behalf of MIM, for the life of the mine, when MIM was the owner of the operation. Thiess continued in this role after Xstrata took over controlling interest in 2003.
Thiess's responsibility included the operation and maintenance of the mine infrastructure that involved the 550 tonnes an hour Coal Handling Preparation Plant (CHPP) as well as the workshop and administrative buildings. The Collinsville mining lease area managed by Thiess covered 2,750 hectares which included eight open pits and 628 kilometres of coal haulage roads to maintain.

The Collinsville Mine produces 4.5 million tonnes of thermal and coking coal each year that requires the removal of 35 million bank cubic metres of overburden. This is achieved with the use of drilling, blasting, dragline, bulk dozer pushing and truck and excavator removal. Up until recent times Thiess have employed 350 of the workforce and another 160 were employed as sub-contractors. Coal mined at the Collinsville Mine is sold to customers in Turkey, India, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and China.

GlencoreXstrata Withdraws Thiess Contract
The mine experienced considerable upheaval in early 2013 when the majority owner, GlencoreXstrata, announced it was going to operate the mine itself to lower costs, therefore the agreement with Thiess was to be discontinued. In order to get a fresh start GlencoreXstrata sent out redundancy notices to over 300 Thiess employees, almost its entire workforce. In February 2013 it announced it was taking over the operation of the mine from September 1, 2013. To gain employment at the mine the Thiess workers would have to agree to different conditions. Some of these changes included pay cuts and changes to the current roster system. GlencoreXstrata stated they didn't know at this early stage how many workers would be re-employed at the Collinsville Mine but they would give preference to people who lived locally.

In 2008 there was also opposition to the plan at that time to construct a 768 bed donga type accommodation village to house fly-in-fly-out workers. The accommodation village that was built was state-of-art and includes an industrial laundry, gym, conference room, tavern, kitchen and dining room.

Note- GlencoreXstrata was formed following a merger of Glencore International and Xstrata, the merger was completed in May 2013. But a decision was made by the Company's shareholders during the annual general meeting and the announcement was made in May 2014 that Glencore will drop Xstrata and be simply known as Glencore.