Filling up to 1200 new West Coast mining jobs in the next few years will require a "critical mass" of mining industry experience to mentor people new to the sector, Minerals West Coast says.
Key employers from across the minerals extraction and mining industry on the West Coast attended a seminar at Work and Income in Greymouth this week in anticipation of the 1200 new jobs expected to be generated in the region.
It comes at a time when the West Coast minerals sector is burgeoning on the back of record gold prices and the high global demand for rare earth minerals for the manufacture of high technology.
Developments include Federation Mining’s Snowy River underground goldmine, the expected Bathurst expansion of Stockton coalmine across to Denniston, the Westland Mineral Sands operations at Cape Foulwind and Mananui, and the planned TiGa mineral sands development on Barrytown Flats. Dozens of small to medium-sized gold operations employing dozens of workers either on site or in the supporting trades sector already augment the local economic contribution.
Minerals West Coast chief executive Patrick Phelps said filling the expected mining jobs would require a combined approach to bring enough workers of the calibre needed on stream, and to do that would rely on a "critical mass" of experience.
This would be crucial to ensure a new workforce could be adequately trained and ready for when new operations start, especially given the critical economic time factor in start-ups.
— Allied Media
