Oceana Gold is refusing to confirm how many of its New Zealand staff have been made redundant, saying only fewer than 10% have been affected by a company-wide review.
Estimates of the combined workforces of the Macraes mine in East Otago and Reefton on the West Coast vary from 860 to 960 employees.
Oceana's senior financial analyst Nova Young did not directly answer ODT questions this week about numbers laid off.
She said following consultation the roles ''disestablished'' were across all parts of operations, including operators, technical professionals and management, while some roles were transferred elsewhere in New Zealand. Any other staff leaving were not being replaced.
Despite detailed redundancy questions, three times emailed to Ms Young and senior management, her response was ''less than 10%'' of Oceana's workforce was affected.
''Overall, the impact of the staff movement is less than 10% of the company's New Zealand workforce,'' she said in a statement yesterday. At its Macraes site in East Otago, up to 28 staff, or possibly more, could be involved in voluntary and imposed redundancies.
Coinciding with employment collective negotiations over five agreements covering most of 600-700 Macraes staff, about 18 were made redundant at the mine, including six who took voluntary redundancy, and possibly 10 administration staff in the Dunedin office.
Oceana's West Coast Reefton mine is scheduled for mothballing in 2015, affecting 260 employees.
The Oceana job losses follow hundreds of Otago-wide jobs lost in recent months.
The Amalgamated Workers Union (AWU), which represents the majority of Macraes staff, had been negotiating five Oceana collective agreements recently, as well as laboratory division terms.
AWU spokesman Calvin Fisher confirmed, when contacted yesterday, the end of negotiations and redundancies in the areas in which the union had representation.
He said the ''majority of staff'' had ''taken a mature outlook'' to the difficult times the resource sector was facing, due to escalating production costs and soft global gold prices.
''There's been a 40% plunge in gold's price. While it has been around $US1270-$US1300 the [gold production] sector is still reeling,'' Mr Fisher said.
Ms Young confirmed renegotiation of collective employment agreements, which expired mid-year, was now complete.
''Union members are to be commended for their understanding of the impact of the lower gold price on the business and the cost reductions and efficiencies that have been agreed,'' she said.
Oceana achieved a turnaround with its third quarter report, released this week, not only booking a much improved profit, but signalling expectations of a strong finish to the end of the year, buoyed by higher than expected copper production in the Philippines.
Similarly, analysts see a strong full-year result for the 2013 calendar year, but are looking for management outlook comment, specifically on the ore grades available for mining at Macraes for the start of 2014.
Mr Fisher said an Oceana presentation to staff during negotiations had outlined policies of non-replacement and why there was the need for a ''productivity drive''.
''The continuation of the mine is reflected in the wage settlement,'' he said.
When asked about pay rises or wage freezes in the negotiations, Mr Fisher said there had been a range of settlements in the separate contracts, with a ''mix of adjustments'' around holidays, wages and rostering of days on and off work. Some staff had lost wages from rostering changes.
Ms Young said a company-wide wage freeze had been implemented and Oceana remained ''focused on improving efficiencies in all of our business units''.
As far back as early July, Oceana signalled it wanted to make $US100 million in savings this financial year, which includes deferral of pre-stripping material above gold bearing ore at Macraes.
To offset rising costs and soft global gold prices, Oceana in June initiated the operational review at Macraes, its Reefton mine on the West Coast and its gold-copper Didipio mine in the northern Philippines, which has in the past four months started ramping up production.
