00:00At the end of a long career, Graham Davis is reluctantly hanging up his high-vis.
00:10The 65-year-old smelter worker has taken a voluntary redundancy.
00:14They'll be very handy for when I'm going fishing I reckon.
00:18Mr Davis has worked at Kalgoorlie Smelter for 30 of the 51 years it's been in operation.
00:25There's other guys who have been there 44, 45 years and they're the fellas who put their
00:31lifeblood into the smelter.
00:34About 380 people are employed at the smelter by Nickel West.
00:39The shutdown was announced by BHP in July, with WA's once booming nickel industry now
00:44on its knees.
00:45We'll just ride this one out and business as usual, yeah I think 99% of the guys who
00:52worked out there were as stunned as I was.
00:5630 workers will stay on during care and maintenance.
00:59The rest will either be redeployed or made redundant.
01:03It's a massive blow to lose anyone really but obviously not their choice too.
01:07The job losses have flowed onto family members working in other sectors.
01:11We lost a doctor as well as a minor so it does have a lot of impact on the community.
01:18There are fears it could result in an exodus of workers from Kalgoorlie.
01:23We're in the last week of production at the smelter.
01:25We're absolutely supporting our people through this transition.
01:29BHP says it will reassess a potential restart of Nickel West in 2027.
01:35Is this just the start of the end?
01:37We'd like to think it isn't.
01:38In terms of the future we're preserving options and we're spending $450 million per annum
01:43to do that.
01:44It is a very cyclical commodity and we are confident we know its place in the critical
01:49minerals world.
01:50I'm hoping like most people that they do stick to their word and they reopen again.
01:57Tough times for critical minerals.
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