It’s here
- 2022.
Day One - all fresh and squeaky clean and moving on from last year’s hangover.
… but I read there is both sweltering weather and flooding rains in the Eastern States?
It’s hot here in Perth too, but not as hot as it is up in Pilbara way where worse is to come
- Marble Bar is expecting 47 degrees on Wednesday (whilst Perth will be just a comparatively “icy” 36 degrees.)
- No wonder the workers out there are wanting big money?
NRW currently has not so many workers in that region as we know.
And moving on from the physical weather to that of price, there’s a glass half full of new year cheer, in the fact lots of analysts (whose views were posted last year) think the odds are that the NWH share price *will* improve from here.
In their reckoning they factored in the larger than usual Capex spend said to be on the way …
… and regards this I just saw DIAB engineering has a new truck to add to the Karara equipment spend and whatever else …
Happily in regards the glass half empty side of this post, it seems DIAB also has the people to drive it, with only two job vacancies advertised in the last 20 days; https://www.seek.com.au/DIAB-Engineering-jobs
In that glass half empty corner (which the analysts are also very well-informed on), the message coming through from all fronts is that last year’s worker ‘hangover’ is hanging on hard, and with no fast-cure ‘hair of the dog’ to make things better.
Stuart McKinnon, in The West today, joined the gang bemoaning ongoing worker problems;
Rob Carruthers. Credit: Jackson Flindell/The West Australian
The State’s thriving but undermanned resources sector is expected to face ongoing labour shortages long after WA’s border opens on February 5.
Both the WA Chamber of Minerals and Energy and the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies say WA employers in the resources sector will face intense interstate and global competition for labour in 2022, particularly for skilled workers.
CME policy and advocacy director Rob Carruthers said it was imperative that WA stuck to its plan to open on February 5, but insisted the free movement of workers across state borders would not be a silver bullet.
“There’s not a strong level of optimism that opening the borders will resolve this issue in the short term,” he said.
“It’s going to require sustained effort and a real drive to identify talent and really incentivise those workers to want to work and live here in WA because it’s not going to be a lay down misere.”
A report commissioned by the CME in June showed WA’s resources sector could need as many as 40,0000 additional workers by mid-2023.
Mr Carruthers said labour shortages had already impacted production and revenue forecasts for some companies and he expected skills scarcity to be an issue through 2022 and into 2023.
Rio Tinto, BHP, Mineral Resources and most recently Pilbara Minerals cited labour shortages as factors in production misses in 2021 while development projects by Rio and Fortescue Metals Group have also been slowed by the skills crunch.
In September, Bardoc Gold shelved the proposed construction of its namesake gold project north of Kalgoorlie because of worker shortages, rising costs and supply chain disruptions.
Mr Carruthers noted that in WA’s last construction-led resources boom which peaked in 2010-11, there wasn’t the same level of activity on the East Coast as there was today.
“There’s 90,000-odd jobs available for infrastructure/construction projects on the East Coast and they are a lot of the same skills that we’ll be looking to fill in WA,” he said.
“Even around the world, there’s wasn’t the same level of stimulus and economic activity then as there is coming out of the pandemic today. We are competing fundamentally on a more challenging keel.
“So for us, a lot of this is going to have to come from really targeted and well incentivised programs for overseas as well as domestic labour.”
Warren Pearce. Credit: Michael Wilson/The West Australian
AMEC chief executive Warren Pearce said mining companies were barely managing their existing operations with the available labour pool.
“And now you have lots of companies trying to expand and take advantage of the good market conditions and those workers are just not there,” he said. “Everyone is dealing with delays, cost overruns and challenges in getting the people they need.”
Mr Pearce, pictured, said he was also concerned that WA would be the last state to open its borders on February 5, with another mining state Queensland having opened up eight weeks prior.
“We’re going to lose a march on a lot of those specialist workers in New South Wales and Victoria who are going to have opportunities to travel to Queensland before WA is able to access them,” he said.
“We’re eight weeks behind and further away.”
NRW WORKER ISSUES?
*sigh*
Re the eight week Western Australian ‘handicap’, maybe Golding can set up a training school or induction centre, hire for NRW, then fly graduates over to WA?
QUARANTINE CENTRES Also workers from overseas are likely to appear increasingly from mid-April for our contracts in WA and Queensland as Stage One (200 beds each) of of the new quarantine centres in Perth and Brisbane are expected to be ready by the end of March [see here; Centres of National Resilience]
…. So labour pressures will be easing.
NRW WELL-PLACED And Jules has oft-stated Karara is likely to be popular with FIFO workers due to being ‘close to home’, and that as a geographically diversified national company there are multiple contracts not being as squeezed in other states, and back in WA maNy employees at RCR, Diab and Primero are home-based/not on full time travel rosters.
…. those analysts liked those reminders : ) And they like Jules’ reputation for honesty too, so when he intimated in the AGM presentation on November 25 [link] that along with the H1 report there might be an upgrade to current full year guidance (ie $145M to $155M) they probably believed him?
A final thought…
WORKER ISSUES AGAIN:
A MAGIC PILL?
In regards hairs of the dog I saw today in The Australian [ref] “….The UK medical regulator MHRA also announced Friday that it has approved Pfizer’s new antiviral pill for over-18s. The Paxlovid pill for high-risk people with Covid was authorised last week by the US Food and Drug Administration for those aged 12 and over. Pfizer says clinical trials prove the pill reduces hospitalisation and deaths among at-risk people by almost 90 per cent. The UK government announced earlier this month that it had signed deals to buy more than 4 million courses of Pfizer’s Paxlovid and US rival Merck/MSD’s molnupiravir…”
If these pills reduce hospitalisation and death in ‘at risk’ people by almost 90% then what is their impact on healthy FIFO workers?
Australia has already bought 300,000 doses of molnupiravir - way back in October [ref].
If the virus-treating pills do substantially reduce covid danger/symptoms I feel it is quite possible the mining industry may apply its’ clout to securing doses for workers so as to substantially reduce risks, costs including (perhaps) quarantine costs/time out.
That eight week handicap spoken of in the delay with luck may prove not to be such a handicap after all?
(20min delay)