Small site BIG opportunities - Nickel West Cliffs Mine

As the main Recruitment Advisor for Cliffs Nickel Mine, when interviewing current employees and contractors for vacancies that we have on site, I hear over and over again how much they enjoy working at Cliffs, the small crews, the support and encouragement they get from their supervisors and management, as well as knowing that any concerns, or suggestions they have, are welcomed and valued.

Cliffs employees, and contractors, continually tell me how they value their roles and the part they play in working together to achieve the goals set, as well as the close friendships that they form with other members of their crew. There is a real ownership in what they do and they really appreciate the “safety before production” culture that forms part of the core values of Nickel West.

Now for some information on Cliffs, which is incorporated into Leinster, is a small narrow vein underground mine approximately 430kms north of Kalgoorlie and around 90kms north of Leinster, and 80kms south of Wiluna.

No long travel time for our employees or contractors, with flight time from the Perth Domestic Airport being around 1hour 10mins, and the plane lands across the road from the Mount Keith Camp so you can walk to your room!

Permanent rooms (no motelling arrangements), are all en-suited and include a TV and small fridge, with some rooms having DVD players, and we are expecting Wi-Fi soon. The Camp also has a 24hour gym, swimming pool, tennis court, basketball court, indoor cricket pitch, and table tennis with sporting equipment available from the gym. Team sports and events are coordinated on a weekly basis. It also has a wet and dry mess, village shop, medical centre and an internet room.

Travel to Cliffs Nickel Mine Site is around 5-7 minutes by mini bus from the Camp! Or, if you are keen, you can walk cross country in about 40minutes!

Being a relative new mine (3-4 years), the expected life of the mine is 8 years, however the strike is still open to the South and the drives are showing better grades than first expected.

We are currently looking at 30m development (or 1500 tonnes) per day, with half from the stopes and the other half from development.

Cliffs is not a hold or a cold mine, as fans on the surface pull the air from an underground shaft and typical temperature is around 28-30degrees, which is a cool change from some underground mines!

We promote internally initially so good opportunities for your career path progression and development.

The main decline splits into the north and south decline and we look like doing some exploration on the northern extension. The orebody is open at depth on the south side.

All the stopes are paste filled with a mixture of mine tails and sand from our quarry which is very effective in keeping the ground stable. The ground conditions are very good, with no mine seismicity, so the mine does not have the activity that other nickel mines experience and so, is a very stable mine.

We also mine our sand from Koonoonooka Quarry, near Leinster, for the paste fill.

The typical underground equipment that we have at Cliffs are 2x R2900G Bogger/Loaders with a new R1700G loader arriving last month, 4x R1300’s with 2 fitted with MineGem teleremote capability, 4x AD55B trucks, 1x AD30 Water Truck, 5 Volvo IT’s, 2x Normet charge units, 2x spray rigs, 2x Simba Long Hole Rigs, 5x Jumbos including 2 X DD420 Sandvik twin boom, 1 Atlas Copco Boomer 282, and 2 Atlas Copco HL104 rigs.

We have around 30 people per crew, with production and development crews having one Underground Mining Supervisor for each crew.

On the maintenance side of things, our workshops are all located on the surface and we have 20 HD Fitters, 4 Auto Electricians, 4 Leading Hand Fitters, 3 Light Vehicle Fitters, 6 HV Sparkies, 2 Leading Hand HV Sparkies, 2 Fixed Plant Fitters and 1 Boilermaker.

Typically our rosters are 8:6 for our maintenance crews and 8:6 or 8:6D – 7:7N for mining, so very family friendly rosters indeed!

Leeanne Smith Recruitment Advisor

Nickel West