The gold in the hills behind Reefton is about to be mined again at the brand new Snowy River mine, established by Australian company Endura.<\/p>\n
The Ikamatua mine, on the West Coast, is moving into full recruitment mode, as the development exceeding $400 million dollars, nears completion.<\/p>\n
Snowy River Mine recruiter Taila Paraone said they’ve got about 110 employees on site at the moment. <\/p>\n
“We’re looking to grow that in the next six months up to 250.”<\/p>\n
The starting salary is $90,000 per annum.<\/p>\n
Development West Coast chief executive officer Heath Milne said: “Salaries on the West Coast are leading the country and it is absolutely about projects like this where we need highly skilled workers.”<\/p>\n
It’s hoped some of the future workforce will return from Australian mines.<\/p>\n
“Anyone local would be brilliant joining our team as we already have quite a few locals here,” Paraone added.<\/p>\n
The site, formerly the home of Blackwater gold mine that closed in the 1950s, has been under development for seven years. <\/p>\n
Endura Executive chairman Jake Klein, who has come from Australia to check on the progress, said “it’s going really well”. <\/p>\n
“We’re on track to deliver gold by the end of this year which will be a huge milestone and then getting into full production next year.”<\/p>\n
Once full up and running, with a completion of a $60 million processing plant, it’s expected to produce upwards of $300 million dollars worth of gold a year.<\/p>\n
Milne said this is “huge for the West Coast”. <\/p>\n
The gold in the hills behind Reefton is about to be mined again at the brand new Snowy River mine (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n
“It’s adding to a commodity we’ve traditionally exported in its raw form.”<\/p>\n
The excitement is building as they edge closer to December, when they expect to pour the first gold bar. Klein likened it to “holding the Bledisloe Cup”.<\/p>\n
Klein, who has worked in gold for three decades, said the mine is a major milestone for New Zealand gold, West Coast gold and Endura as a company. <\/p>\n
“Once it gets in your blood it stays there, it’s infectious. When I started the gold price was around $500 an ounce and its now over $6500 an ounce, so it’s really an exciting time to be part of the industry now.”<\/p>\n
The countdown to their eureka moment is on target for December, with full operations early next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The gold in the hills behind Reefton is about to be mined again at the brand new Snowy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[138,111,139,69,1241],"class_list":["post-567209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-west-coast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}