https://www.afr. com/companies/mining/fifo-for-couples-cash-splash-on-camps-but-more-mothballs-for-lithium-20210811-p58hun
FIFO for couples, cash splash on camps but more mothballs for lithium
Chris Ellison’s Minerals Resources is set to make its mining camps couple-friendly and build Olympic-size swimming pools to hang on to workers in WA.
Brad ThompsonReporter
Aug 11, 2021 – 3.56pm
Chris Ellison’s Minerals Resources is set to introduce fly in, fly out for couples and build Olympic-size swimming pools at mining camps as it looks to hang on to increasingly precious workers in the West Australian resources sector.
The cash splash on luxury mining camps comes with Mineral Resources and US partner Albemarle in no rush to take the Wodgina lithium mine out of mothballs.
Mr Ellison said Mineral Resources was pulling out all stops to retain and recruit workers in WA amid COVID-19 restrictions cutting off access to international and intrastate workers that have limited the company’s ability to get iron ore from mines to port.
The Wodgina lithium mine looks set to stay in mothballs as Albemarle and Minerals Resources focus on building downstream capacity.
The billionaire mining boss estimates the industry in WA will need 30,000 to 40,000 more workers in the next few years amid lobbying for a special visa to access overseas labour.
“We want them [our workers] to be with us for a long time, their entire working career, and we’re doing a lot of things to try and make the work environment for our people probably in the top 20 per cent in the country,” he said.
Mr Ellison is escalating a mining camp arms race in WA that already includes Gina Rinehart’s Roy Hill offering wagyu steaks to its workers and BHP’s unveiling a camp with a three-storey café, CrossFit gym, a kitchen just for cooking masterclasses and a virtual golf course.
“We’re going to have bigger rooms, we’re going to encourage couples to be able to work and live together on site,” Mr Ellison said. “We’re going to have Olympic-sized swimming pools, we’re putting in wellness centres, restaurants, taverns, cafés.”
Mr Ellison maintained Mineral Resources could quickly assemble enough workers to restart the Wodgina lithium mine – touted as potentially the biggest and best in Australia behind Greenbushes in WA’s South-West – but was in no rush.
Wodgina was put into in care and maintenance on the same day in November 2019 that Albemarle finalised a deal to hand Mineral Resources $US1.3 billion for a 60 per cent stake.
Mr Ellison confirmed on Wednesday that Wodgina was likely to stay in mothballs until Albemarle acquired a lithium hydroxide plant in China, with Mineral Resources also keen to boost its downstream exposure.
Neither Albemarle nor Mineral Resource see value in selling unrefined lithium spodumene despite a price rally that sent the share price of Pilbara Minerals, which mines close to Wodgina, to a record high on Wednesday.
Mineral Resources does expect to capture higher spodumene prices in the next few months through its partnership with China’s Jiangxi Ganfeng in the Mt Marion mine in WA, but Mr Ellison said the market was still highly sensitive to increases in supply.
“We’re not in a rush to open up Wodgina and then just go sell rock into the market because it would be very short-term,” he said.
“We’re not really comfortable that the market can support that type of supply coming into it at the moment.”
However, Mr Ellison confirmed Mineral Resources was on the hunt for more lithium deposits in WA to add to Wodgina and Mt Marion.
Mineral Resources is not forecasting any earnings in 2021-22 from the delayed lithium hydroxide plant Albemarle is building at Kemerton in WA.
Albemarle intends to feed Kemerton, plagued by delays and cost blow outs, from the Greenbushes mine it owns through a joint venture with China’s Tianqi.
Mineral Resources secured a right to 40 per cent of the output of trains 1 and 2 at Kemerton as part of the Wodgina transaction with Albemarle to market the lithium hydroxide.
(20min delay)