North Queensland miners meet to tackle infrastructure inadequacies

A Queensland Resources Council (QRC) working group convened today (Friday, July 6) to recommend long-term policies for industrial development of the North West Minerals Province, in an effort to negate the &#8220embarrassing&#8221 state of infrastructure in the sector. Leading resource companies, including BHP-Billiton (Cannington), Zinifex (Century), Metallica Minerals, Southern Cross Fertilisers (Phosphate Hill), Xstrata Copper (Mount Isa), Barrick Gold (Osborne) and Stanwell Corporation will be represented at the forum in Townsville. QRC chief executive Michael Roche said the enormous opportunities associated with continuing development of the region were met by as many challenges &#8211 including the availability of skilled labour and housing and the reliability of transport and energy. &#8220By bringing the QRC’s North West members together, we are building an important bridge between the aspirations of both industry and governments to consolidate the future of North West Queensland,&#8221 he said. &#8220The best policies derive from a thorough understanding of the possibilities and the challenges and in that respect, this group is going to be served by the A-list of resource companies operating in the region.&#8221 Mr Roche told the ABC the state of the Queensland Rail network &#8211 particularly between Mount Isa and Townsville &#8211 was in desperate need of investment and an embarrassment when compared with equivalent routes operating in South America. QR said it was disappointed with comments reported in the press by the QRC about the performance of the freight corridor. During the 2004&#4705 to 2008&#4709 five-year program, QR planned to spend a further $230m on the Mt Isa to Townsville line, a QR spokesman said. In the 10 years before 2004&#4705, QR spent $234m upgrading the line, including replacing 119 km of steel sleepers with concrete and improved drainage. &#8220Work such as this improves performance and safety,&#8221 the spokesman said. &#8220For example, over the last 10 years infrastructure derailments have been significantly reduced from 11 a year average to one.&#8221 QR planned to adopt a supply chain management approach on all resource driven networks &#8211 including the Mt Isa to Townsville line, the spokesman said. &#8220We are currently working closely with the Queensland and Federal Governments to develop a comprehensive strategy for the corridor,&#8221 he said. The Mt Isa-Townsville rail corridor was second only to the Melbourne-Adelaide corridor in terms of annual freight carried on the AusLink National Network, with nearly 4m tonnes of predominantly bulk freight railed each year. QR said it would work with the Queensland Resources Council, the Port of Townsville and north Queensland mines to develop a masterplan that would identify solutionsto accommodate future demand forthe route. Improvements could include operational productivity, efficiency and reliability from the mines through to the ports, it said. A masterplan would also establish how much tonnage would need to be transported and identify infrastructure and other resources that would be needed to meet the demand. &#8220To date, QR’s Network Access has received no formal complaints or requests for increased capacity on the Mount Isa line from customers,&#8221 the spokesman said.

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