I agree, although from what I have seen most mining equipment...

I agree, although from what I have seen most mining equipment looked in reasonably new condition. There is a lot of surplus equipment parked and not used.

I was advised that the cable way to load out facility is the bottleneck for increased production. The best SE achieved, from memory, was 1.3m tons/yr.

In bygone years there was around 8km of cable ways from various mine locations to the load out facility, currently its less than 2km so there maybe left over equipment available to increase the current capacity to load out.

A wash plant, maybe the one at Pike River, is needed at Maramarua to reduce wastage.

BRLs modis operandi is to contract out as much operation as possible, ie all mining production, thus transferring plant ownership to the contractors.

SE had a massive excess of mining equipment, plant and vehicles. One morning I counted 37 Toyota Landcruisers going up the hill to Stockton mine, all with one person on board. BRL will more than likely have sold all these or leased them out to the contractors. There was something like 40 portable offices up at the mine, all utilised by SE middle management, now only a couple are being used.