Historic Rasp Mine in Broken Hill, NSW stops production

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Hundreds of workers at a Broken Hill mine in outback New South Wales face redundancy, if its parent company can't find a buyer for the operation.

Transcript

00:00 It was completely out of the blue for workers, the union and everyone in the city.

00:06 Basically workers were sent a text on Sunday night at around 8pm telling them that there

00:10 would be a series of meetings the following morning at 6am, 7am and 8am.

00:15 When they arrived they didn't really know what was going to happen and they were fairly

00:18 quickly informed that they would likely be made redundant by the end of November.

00:23 Unfortunately for some though they were made redundant pretty much yesterday on the spot.

00:28 Others were the drilling operator, people involved in the drilling process as well.

00:33 For the rest of them they faced sort of an uncertain future as they won't know for a

00:37 couple of weeks time if and when or what the redundancy might look like.

00:43 What difficult news for them.

00:45 Do we know how many staff this will affect Bill?

00:50 It'll affect around 200 workers directly, although the impact indirectly around the

00:56 city, there's a number of businesses, many businesses actually, it's a mining city,

01:01 it's a mining town that has a rich history of that dating back to the 1880s.

01:05 A lot of businesses are actually built around the mines as well and they really function

01:10 as a result of the mines.

01:12 Around 200 jobs, most of them on the mine and contractors, although the full extent

01:17 of the potential impact if the mine does close down at the end of November is unknown.

01:22 What are the reasons that are being given for what appears to be a sudden closure?

01:30 Well we've heard from CBH Resources who run the mine in a statement.

01:34 They said that their parent company, Japanese parent company Toho Zinc, they are just not

01:40 able to continue to invest in the operations here in Broken Hill.

01:44 And so they're actively seeking a buy, which I suppose for many locals is a positive.

01:49 They had the mine valued last year when the price of zinc was quite high, although I'm

01:55 not sure really what the process is from there, if they were actively seeking a buyer at that

02:00 stage or if this is a fairly sort of new decision.

02:04 Bill, what are locals on the ground telling you?

02:10 Well I mean most people around the city are fairly shocked.

02:14 The workers in the union don't know, then most people around the city had no idea this

02:18 was coming.

02:19 I spoke to Mayor Tom Kennedy yesterday, he was obviously saddened.

02:21 His thoughts were with the families of those affected and the businesses as the flow on

02:26 effect.

02:27 And then I also spoke to the mining union as well, the local representative Todd Ferguson.

02:32 He was fairly optimistic as well that there could be the potential for some jobs to continue

02:38 and he was fairly optimistic as a whole that the mine would be picked up.

02:43 As I understand it, RASP is still a viable mine, it's just that Toho made the decision

02:47 to not pursue it any further.

02:51 With the development that they've made recently, there is potential there for someone to come

02:54 in and buy it.

02:55 I believe they're actively pursuing to buy it, to source a buyer.

03:00 So yeah, we'll see how it goes.

03:03 That was Todd Ferguson from the mining union.

03:05 As you heard there, they've made some developments recently in the hundreds of millions of dollars

03:09 they've invested over the last decade here and the mine still has life left in it.

03:13 So you'd imagine there is a prospect of it being picked up, but the timeline for when

03:18 - there's only two weeks until the rest of these workers, or the majority of these workers,

03:25 will be made redundant.

03:26 So it's a fairly tight timeline and you'd think any transition would take longer than

03:30 that.

03:31 So we'll have to just really wait and see what happens.

03:33 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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