Reefton Early Learning Centre, Sacred Heart School and Reefton Area School are all Enviroschools. There are over 1,300 Enviroschools around New Zealand, participating in an environmental action-based programme where young people are empowered to design and lead sustainability projects in their schools, neighbourhoods and country. Buller District Council is an Enviroschools regional partner.

OceanaGold’s Reefton Restoration Project donated 150 manuka and 50 beech trees to the Strand Project. The balance of the 400 trees planted were funded from the Buller District Council Community-led Revitalisation funding given to the Strand Revitalisation Project.

Each school was responsible for a different area. Sacred Heart planted on the Rosstown Road side, students from Reefton Early Learning Centre looked after the Lower Strand side and students from Reefton Area School planted the area behind the swimming pool and beside the look-out pier.

Earlier in the month Reefton Restoration Project staff had partnered with students at Sacred Heart School to plant seedlings on the school grounds, while in September they gave a tree seedling to each person who attended the opening of the Golden Globe Theatre at the Reefton Visitor Centre as a reminder of the event.

Reefton Restoration Project Environmental & Restoration Coordinator Steph Hayton said that OceanaGold had planted over 700,000 native seedlings at the mine site, with plans for at least another 200,000 by the end of 2022.

“It’s great to share some of the beautiful native trees we plant onsite with the community through planting initiatives. At the end of the day are all working towards the same goal, a resilient and sustainable environment,” Steph said.

OceanaGold is expanding gold mining in New Zealand’s North Island following an exploration campaign, which has identified significant additional ore deposits in the area.

The Waihi District Study is a Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) indicating strong value creating potential from several projects.  The base case scenario extends the mine life at Waihi to at least 2036, from multiple sources of ore feed, with a potential initial resource of 2.4 million ounces of contained gold.

The 12-month study looked at the Waihi District’s resource potential holistically. The study establishes the future production potential of the resources in the region, development requirements for each project, and the associated key milestones including mine production, processing and gold production.

The Waihi District in the North Island of New Zealand includes the town of Waihi and surrounding areas. The mining projects in the PEA include Martha Underground, Wharekirauponga (WKP) Underground, Martha Open Pit Cutback and Gladstone Open Pit.

Michael Holmes, President and CEO of OceanaGold said, “We are very pleased to share the positive results of the Waihi District Study that represents the initial value creating potential of the district opportunities.”

“The results of the study give us confidence to move forward with these opportunities. We see potential for further significant growth through resource additions particularly at Martha Underground and WKP deposits. Further resource expansion also has the potential for sustained high levels of annual gold production and mine life extension,” Mr Holmes added.

The modern Martha Mine and underground operations have been operating at Waihi for over 30 years. OceanaGold will enlarge the current Martha open pit, mine a second smaller pit on the outskirts of town near the company’s process plant, develop a new tailings storage facility, and construct a rock stack next to the existing tailings storage areas.

Economic benefits

The Waihi District Study shows significant socio-economic benefits for the regional community and for New Zealand, which can play a critical role in the post-COVID-19 economic recovery, including 300 new jobs in addition to the existing 900-person countrywide workforce.

“When OceanaGold purchased the Waihi Operation in 2015, the mine had a life of less than three years. We made a commitment then to extend the life of the mine and develop the economic benefits it brings to Waihi and the broader district. We are a high value export intensive industry that supports a wide range of businesses and jobs,” Mr Holmes said.

“With the potential to extend the mine life out to 2036, we would invest an estimated US$1.4 billion in the area. This is in addition to the significant benefits already delivered in New Zealand over the last 32 years of operation at Waihi.”

Mining in New Zealand

New Zealand has a long, rich history of mining dating back to the 1800s. Over the past 30 years, OceanaGold has successfully operated to the highest environmental and social standards and delivered significant socio-economic benefits to regional communities in both the North and South Islands.

Waihi, in particular, grew around the mining operations since the discovery of gold in the area over 150 years ago. Today, the town’s motto is “the heart of gold mining in New Zealand”.

The critical path for success is permitting and while the New Zealand permitting process is prescriptive, OceanaGold is very familiar with it.

“There are no short-cuts, permitting in New Zealand requires extensive engagement and transparency. We have successfully permitted dozens of projects in the country over the last 30 years, including most recently the Martha Underground Project which was permitted six months ahead of schedule in 2019. We have a strong reputation as a responsible miner and have solid relationships with the local community and other stakeholders,” Mr Holmes said.

Responsible mining

OceanaGold’s approach to sustainability is to build a positive legacy, delivering value throughout and beyond the life of its mines.

The land under which the Wharekirauponga (WKP) deposit sits is culturally and environmentally significant. It is also an important recreational area for walkers and campers and home to the critically endangered native Archey’s Frog.

That’s why any potential mining operation at Wharekirauponga would be underground and with minimal surface disturbance to protect the conservation values of the region.

“We believe we can mine the resource sensitively and respectfully using proven underground methods. Although we have tested enough rock to be confident that the gold discovered at the site could support a mine, we still need to undertake significant, detailed studies before we apply for resource consents,” Mr Holmes said.

This is not the first potential mine on conservation land for the company. OceanaGold successfully operated Reefton, an open pit mine in Department of Conservation land for nine years. Since ceasing operations the company has been conducting leading practice closure and rehabilitation at the site.

“We strongly support responsible mining, protecting conservation land and working with technical experts to understand and protect the biodiversity of the areas we operate in. We’re proud of our engagement and partnerships with local communities and the support we receive for our operations and future development,” Mr Holmes said.

Organic growth

OceanaGold has one of the best organic growth pipelines in the global gold sector, currently investing in a number of growth opportunities.

The majority of OceanaGold’s exploration activities are in New Zealand, particularly at Waihi where the resource has significantly increased since the asset was acquired in 2015.

“We have a high-quality management team and high-quality assets – which is a recipe for success, combined with one of the best organic growth pipelines in the gold sector. Over the next several years, we expect to build four underground mines in low-risk jurisdictions where we have extensive operating experience,” Mr Holmes said.

We closely examined our existing operations and exploration sites and developed a Preliminary Economic Assessment to examine additional opportunities to extend the life of the operation.

The study has allowed us to better-understand and optimise the overall development of our Waihi resources while balancing numerous, detailed considerations such as quality of the resources, capital expenditure, consenting (permitting) and stakeholder impacts.

One of the projects under the study is Project Quattro, which includes the Martha open pit extension, an additional tailings storage facility, new Gladstone open pit, a northern rock stack and infrastructure upgrades to support expanded operation. Watch this video to find out more about our proposed projects.

At the Didipio Mine in the Philippines, we undertook an innovative social data knowledge-building approach, with the aim of enhancing our social performance. The principle was to establish a process to better understand social changes induced by our operation in order to adequately address them whilst increasing opportunities for participatory processes. Our key focus was to incorporate the community perspective as an integral and core component of an adaptive management system.

As a first step, we engaged local social scientists to help us identify, categorise and analyse in a qualitative manner the social changes that have occurred and how they were perceived by local stakeholders in the study area. The study area included 14 Barangays (villages) around our sites, and 36 families with varying income levels and livelihood sources were involved. Data was collected in three ways:

1. Ethnographic case studies of the 36 selected families.
2. Focus groups aimed at constructing a local memory of social changes from the arrival of the mine and identify the perceived impacts associated with mining activity.
3. In depth interviews with smaller selection of community members from different social groups.

This data collection process was complimented with a remote sensing project, which enabled the collection of relevant geo-spatial data. The objective of this project was to characterise changes in mining footprints and the surrounding landscapes, including artisanal mining, main roads and forestry across Didipio mine’s lifecycle. It made use of freely available Landsat data dating back to before the mining operations began.

The next step is to validate the social change pathways through triangulation with qualitative data and spatial analysis using internal and external evidence. This will also highlight the possible attribution or influence (direct and indirect) of the mining project or operation. This requires measurable indicators to be defined previously for each of the elements that make up a pathway.  Secondary information from the household socioeconomic surveys and other sources can be used to set indicators.

Once the existence of the change pathways (trends) has been verified, a baseline can be developed to assess social change and the effects on the different types of families, especially on vulnerable families, as family type and impact area can be differentiated.  The analysis of the consequences of the change and its indicators will be carried out to identify what social changes and their effects have significantly affected the population including a hierarchy of effects by family type and impact area.

In the end, the aim is to develop strategies for future monitoring of social change. It is crucial for us to be able to monitor the most important changes that the population experiences and to illustrate the local narrative. This will include the development of a quantitative baseline and implementation of a monitoring system of changes and social impacts using the adaptive management approach to ensure an iterative process.

Overall, this social change assessment process is to propose and reflect on innovative approaches to enhance the social performance framework, by adopting an adaptive management system with feedback loops addressing the community perspective as an integral aspect, and promoting an integrated, multi-layered social science approach to inform and improve social performance.

ADaPT is a key feature of our strategy to prepare for operational change as our stakeholders expect us to produce more, waste less, and protect our people and environment. Digital transformation presents an industry-wide opportunity to enhance performance and reduce impact.

What is ADaPT?

We created ADaPT through a high-level collaborative planning workshop that included OceanaGold, Sandvik and MST Global.

The basic principle was to build internal capacity to generate better real time data and use that data to communicate across our workforce, mitigate risk and innovate. Better data enables reduced energy consumption and waste production, and more efficient processes result in producing gold with less rock removed, processed and stored, resulting in less coarse waste and tailings.

Implementation at the Didipio Mine

We strategically selected the underground Didipio Mine to become a flagship site for ADaPT:  an ideal site due to its early stage in the mining lifecycle and resilient workforce with an appetite for change.

The mine will be a model modern operation delivering greater safety, higher efficiencies and increased productivity. To drive this transformation, we are working in partnership with Sandvik for their expertise in mine automation systems, and MST for their experience in the data communications systems required to support productivity and safety processes in underground mines.

Project Manager James Allnutt is leading the transformation program and spoke to us about the process the Transformation Team has led since 2018.

“It started with a thorough review of the state of underground mining technologies, as the team planned to build on industry learning and take a ‘fast follower’ approach. We assessed that ADaPT would help the operation achieve a 10 per cent productivity gain by making the Didipio Mine more connected,” James said.

“In order to better plan for the transformation, we adopted the Idea Management Process, which involves defined steps to achieve sustained and incremental change: diagnostic, prioritise, sign on, implement, track and sustain, and sign off. Benefits from adopting this process of prioritisation were immediately seen – we noticed a clear reduction in frustrations and competition for operations resources. Our first output, a qualitative review of the value and barriers specific to each idea, was used to prioritise these ideas and put them into action.”

Idea management process at Didipio

Two of the projects that resulted from this process were prioritised in the ideas pipeline:

• Surface remote bogging, which aims to increase the stope production rate and enhance safety by removing personnel from hazardous areas. The team was able to track the progress by measuring daily additional tonnes bogged over shift change
• Digitised task management, aimed at increasing equipment utilisation and efficiency. The project initially focused on trucks and managed to reduce the idle time significantly. Digitised task management enabled mining supervisors to monitor task progress with real-time and accurate data.

A third project, viewed as an enabler sub-project, was identified as critical to the success of many projects: the backbone and wireless network.

“A fibre optic backbone and Wi-Fi-based network was installed at the Didipio  Mine providing a reliable, mobile and high bandwidth data communication system capable of withstanding the harsh underground environment. The open connectivity allows data-hungry applications, such as mine automation and fleet management systems to be supported by single network infrastructure. Personal safety beacons monitor mine employees’ locations in real-time, enabling rapid accounting for personnel in emergencies and smart management of refuge chamber capacities and fixed plant operations,” James said.

“The implementation of the Idea Management Process to sequence, prioritise and manage transformation ideas at the Didipio Mine improved the integration of the transformation project objectives with the operating teams. Learnings were invaluable. One of them was the importance of having a communication strategy to manage expectations, engage stakeholders and reduce the risk of ineffective implementation.”

“ADaPT has already changed the way we operate. Experience to date has shown existing jobs are becoming more interesting as repetitive work is removed and people are being empowered to enhance their roles. Our workforce welcomed the change and saw the benefits in their day-to-day jobs through technologies that connect them with each other and protect them from the typical hazards associated with the mining environment.”

Oliver Donato is one of the OGPI scholarship recipients. Oliver originally wanted to be a computer engineer, but due to limited financial resources, he had to stop attending school for six years. Things turned around for him when OceanaGold commenced operations and provided scholarships to the community.

As an OceanaGold scholar, Oliver studied Environmental Science at the Nueva Vizcaya State University, graduating to become an Environmental Assistant at the Didipio Mine, where he was focused on minimising raw water use. Today, as the Didipio Mine’s Environmental Compliance Supervisor, Oliver oversees the mine’s Environment Management System to optimise water management on site. Oliver also oversaw Didipio Mine’s ISO14001 recertification process.

In 2019, Oliver won the Outstanding Pollution Control Officer (TOPCO) of Pollution Control Association of the Philippines Inc. (PCAPI)’s 39th general assembly. He was the first local from the Nueva Vizcaya province to win the award. In his award speech, he explained how he keeps Didipio Mine’s water pollution free with the mine’s water treatment plant.

“OceanaGold operates a water treatment plant that recycles water from the tailings storage facility and pumps it back to the processing plant for reuse. This means we can recycle between 80-90% of the water we use,” Oliver said.

Working for OceanaGold has widened my perspective on mining and mining technologies. From elementary to high school, we were taught that mining is destructive, and just because I’m employed here doesn’t mean I’m automatically for large-scale mining. However, with OceanaGold, I learned that we could mine without destroying the environment, by being compliant to local and international regulations,” he said.

What Oliver ultimately wants to do is give back to his community and for other people to benefit from the same opportunities that he received. He helps new Didipio Mine scholars to make their way to college.

“Apart from environmental compliance, I want Didipio Mine’s social development and management, and corporate social responsibility projects to be sustainable. The actual sustainability would depend on the community residents who are the recipients of these projects, on how they make use of the projects,” he said.

Image: Oliver Donato at the Pollution Control Association of the Philippines Inc. (PCAPI)’s 39th general assembly. 

There are many processes, machines, and tools in mining that can cause harmful noise exposures to employees. At Haile Gold Mine, during a routine personal industrial hygiene monitoring, Mary Koerner, Senior Health & Safety Coordinator and her team identified that exploration drills were exposing employees to excessive noise levels.

Mary joined the Haile Gold Mine team in 2019, after working in health and safety in the mining, natural gas and aerospace industries for 12 years. She says her passion working in this field was amplified after joining the company, which has the safety and wellbeing of its people as its number one priority. “Helping people has always been my driving force and my role at OceanaGold has really reinforced that personal ambition,” Mary says.

In a joint effort between exploration and health and safety teams, several engineering controls were tested on the drills to reduce noise levels. The goal was to limit levels to an acceptable rate whereby drillers would only be required to wear single hearing protection – or even better – no hearing protection at all.

Potential noise sources were identified including the muffler, the engine and the head rotation speed. The team, lead by Exploration Supervisor, Justin Adams (with Mary in the picture), resolved to place a one-inch insulation under the rotation guard for the drill steel, which would reduce noise impacts by enclosing the noise source and creating a barrier between it and the driller. This solution succeeded in reducing the sound pressure level by from 98.7 dBA to 93 dBA.

Mary says this innovative solution will have profound, positive impacts on the drillers’ quality of work life for years to come. Teamwork, and collaborative processes that fostered innovation, were the key to success.

“Careful collection and presentation of data is key. And, while my job can be challenging at times, improving the health, morale and productivity of our team is what drives me to do better, every day.”

Image: Mary Koerner, Health & Safety Superintendent for Haile Gold Mine, graduated with a BA in Environmental Science Biology from The University of Montana Western and an MS in Industrial Hygiene from Montana Tech.

In 2019, the Macraes Operation started a journey which aims to achieve a gender ratio representative of the community in which it operates. Women accounted for 14 per cent of the workforce, while they make up 53 per cent of the New Zealand South Island population. On average, female employees represent 17 per cent of the workforce across mining companies globally; in Australia this average rises to around 22 per cent.

In February 2019, the Macraes Operation established a Women in Mining committee to support gender diversity and inclusion; generate – and action – ways to support women in mining; and to grow the number of women working at the Macraes Operation to better represent the regional population. In that same year, the Macraes Operation set a target to achieve 20 per cent female representation in the workforce by 2023.

The initial focus of the committee was supported by the Macraes Balanced Business Plan – Lead a Caring and Diverse Workforce Environment. Initiatives were initially drawn from the inaugural Women in Mining event in 2018 where women who were identified as showing high leadership potential came together to discuss what support networks and development was needed on site to give each employee an equal opportunity to succeed. Throughout 2018, the Women in Mining committee then took the first steps towards achieving their goals by engaging with a number of external businesses, such as Diversity Works, who help address gender diversity within local organisations.

By the end of 2019, the operation saw a three per cent increase in the number of women on site. The Open Pit team continues to lead the way in achieving the long-term goal with females representing 20 per cent of their workforce at the end of 2019.

In December 2019, the Women in Mining committee hosted their annual event, and invited women from across the operation to take part in identifying areas of personal growth and the skills required to be mobile in their careers. The event also provided the opportunity for male counterparts in leadership positions to attend and continue to understand how they can support and develop their female colleagues reach their full potential as part of a diverse team.

As the Women in Mining committee continues to evolve, there is hope that new groups of men and women from across the business will consider joining in to champion this change and help find ways to make the Macraes Operation an even better place to work. In 2020, the Women in Mining initiative will form part of a wider Diversity and Inclusion focus and the site has yet again committed to achieving another 3 per cent increase in female employees by the end of the year.

Image: The launch of the ‘pink bucket’ as part of a breast cancer fundraiser in October 2019