When you need size and grunt ... Symonds Hill in the making ... Netta's impulsive side ... Subsea mining off the West Coast ... Seabed drilling ... Time for a rational debate ... Sharing good practice ... Crown land already protected ... Closing the Tui legacy ... Operating on a green tank
Holcim welcomes first Hyundai ... Digging for gold ... Taylored for the job ... Kaikoura icon ... Sharing good practice ... Interest rates rising ... Unlocking our resources ... Coal for the taking
Giants for a giant job ... A quarry came with it ... From paper to rock ... Good use of a pressure cooker ... The making of Pike River ... Squeezing water from lignite ... For the good of the country ... Project Hayes ramifications
A winning year for Porters ... Southerly views ... A man of two careers ... The undecided miner ... Setting standards for cleanfill ... North Island minerals draft report ... A momentous year
When you need a tough bogger ... The red red stones of home ... Mining tourists ... Gold by the bucket ... A new era for minerals ... Shot at, kidnapped and bombed ... Take your foot off the gas ... Framework for mining feasibility ... When the rain comes
Indispensable at the coalface ... On Rainbow Mountain ... Yorkshire lass Downunder ... Seafloor riches ... Cost saving energy audits ... A quarry with a big community heart ... Gold country ... When you need a tough stud ... Savings with onboard weighing systems
Hitachi ADT gains traction ... A birthday in Taranaki ... Lignite pit now a picturesque tourist stop ... Talking with Mr Safety ... All that glitters ... The Weaver's Park lesson ... Rocking on 40 years later ... Seafloor mineral exploration update
Smooth Dash-9 joins lime works ... A city's heritage ... Mr Quarryman ... Big toys on the coal front ... Training – setting the path ... Cold comfort ... Building a safer minerals industry
Big crawler for a big job ... Out of India ... The sensitive approach ... Rotowaro's final chapter ... Ironsand prospecting on the West Coast
Credit crunch antics ... The cementing of Pike River ... Family connections ... Supergrip aggregate ... The industry under blue
Mining the ocean depths ... Rocking the world from Matamata [the Rocktec years] ... When quarrying and tourism meet ... The final crush ... Heavy metal
Skullduggery ... Greenstone quandary ... Rocking the world from Matamata [the Barmac years] ... For the love of water
A potential scrap over Antarctic sovereignty and the region’s energy resources is in the making, if territorial claimants start to demand slices of the Southern Ocean seabed.
They found gold at Ophir in Central Otago in the 1860s and now they’re finding it again.
Community relations are a priority for aggregate operators these days, and no one understands or exercises this better than the family-owned Stevenson Group. Its long history of community projects in South Auckland, is a lesson for the industry.
They were hacking limestone rocks out of North Otago’s rolling hills as early as 1862 and demand remains undiminished for the milky-coloured stone that is synonymous with Oamaru.
Heritage Gold is confident it will find a large enough resource from its Waihi permits and mine asset to start gold mining in the near future. ALAN TITCHALL spends a day with the prospector as it explores it tenements.
Under new owners the Hinuera quarry in the Waikato has a new lease of life.
Eastern by name and eastern by focus: HUGH DE LACY looks at a recent coal industry arrival on the New Zealand scene.
Is it quarrying or mining? There are elements of both in the sea-salt harvesting operation at Grassmere in Marlborough.
It’s an industry redolent of colonial Ireland – picture sodden peasants hewing the stuff from bogs – but peat mining is a well-established, though shrinking, business in New Zealand.
Over two million tonne of quarried product was used in the construction of the new Otago Regional Corrections Facility at Milburn in South Otago. Blackhead Quarries manager Gavin Hartley provides a hands-on view of the project’s scale.
Cobus van Vuuren is passionate about rock - as one might expect of the general manager of quarrying for the Higgins Group. And he's on a mission to educate the unaware end-user in the elemental importance of aggregates.
John Rae, the managing director of the Stevenson Group, a family owned, diversified investment company with operations in quarrying, mining, agriculture, building products, engineering, transport and property, provides an outside review of the industry.
A decade ago, Mervin and Bruce Leach (the sons of founder Harry Gordon) stepped back from their quarrying business and left HG Leach in the hands of Eric Souchon, a civil engineer from South Africa. Their directive was simple – diversify.
It’s a huge stack of acid-generating mine tailings containing toxic heavy metals – arsenic, lead, zinc, copper and cadmium – that for three decades has threatened to burst through its slowly eroding wall and plunge down the mountain-side towards the township of Te Aroha.
It’s as dinkum Aussie as a bucket of prawns and an ice cold beer, and a mining activity that is the antithesis to the practices of modern mineral extraction.
Get six geologists in a room to discuss the origins of opal and you'll get six different answers. Unlike most other minerals, relatively little is known about the processes involved in the formation of opal or exactly how old opal is.
Over 95 percent of the world's top quality opal comes from Australia. Despite its value, the Australian opal industry remains fragmented at every level – from mining through to marketing. Little wonder the industry is in decline.
Q&M talks with Newmont Waihi manager Glen Grindlay about the company’s future once Martha mine is closed.
Newmont has developed a new model for mine rehabilitation that involves the local community as it shuts down its 20 year old Martha opencast mining operation in Waihi and explores further opportunities that could have it based in the region for some time.
Underground mining technology in New Zealand will take a great leap forward in mid-2007 when six Sandvik tele-remote-controlled loader-hauler-dumpers start production mining in the country’s two newest underground gold projects.
It’s not quite like the old days when there were nearly 70 companies mining the quartz fields, but Reefton is back as a major New Zealand gold producer now that OceanaGold has got the Globe-Progress mine working again.
The performance of two of its state-of-the-art drilling machines on separate major new West Coast projects has got staff at Atlas Copco’s New Zealand subsidiary buzzing.
Coal has been mined on and off at Mokau since the late 1800s, however, since 1950 the coal seams have been untouched. Now Genesis Energy has begun studying the region with a view to developing a mine there.
Already basking in the glow of the Waikato Sustainable Business Award it won in August 2006, Newmont Waihi has further cause to celebrate its commitment to the local community with the completion of the relocation of the historic 1840 tonne Cornish pumphouse.
Dr Greg Arnold asks the question: Can your aggregate stand up to today’s heavy vehicle loadings?
Robin Hocking has considerable experience in the valuation of quarries and landfills in Australia, and believes using dual captalisation rates to value a quarry or landfill site is the most effective method. Although his examples are generally from Victoria, the basic principles of valuation are pertinent to New Zealand.
A quarry that has been around for more than 70 years is about to start producing aggregate in serious quantities – Rodney Aggregate Supplies plans to extract and process 450,000 tonnes of top quality greywacke for the region’s roads.
From humble beginnings as a quarrying and crushing operation, to the acquisition of a machinery dealership, Screening and Crushing Sales has blossomed into a manufacturer of quarrying equipment, the majority of which is exported.
February-March 2009
August-September 2008
A venerable stone
A prospector's vision
Opal mining - you never know your luck
Keeping your distance
Preserving a piece of mining history
Home grown