Anglo American’s Moranbah North Coal Handling Preparation Plant was the winner of Australian Mining Minerals Processing Plant of the Year award.
The judges awarded Moranbah North the trophy for achieving six years operating Lost Time Injury free.
The judges said "Moranbah North's record of going six years LTI free is an impressive achievement, let's hope they can keep it going for another six".
In January 2012 a major restructure of the Moranbah North operation was undertaken, resulting in high longwall and development operational times and corresponding record tonnages and metres.
Furthermore, the business risk mitigation processes were reviewed, leading to stringent guidelines, systems and leading edge innovation introduced to the operation to ensure the Life of Mine integrity is under no circumstances compromised.
The improvements have been delivered across a number of areas, but fundamentally, they have been produced by strong leadership, a clear vision and increased accountability.
A lot of work has been completed, including improving time to first coal and time to last coal. This means getting the workforce safely to the face as soon as possible after beginning their shift to start producing coal as early as possible.
The workforce keeps the longwall cutting until the absolute end of their shift which leads to more tonnes on the belt and throughput. Improvements made to the standard and reliability of the coal clearance system, the main conveyor system that transports coal out of the mine, have played a large part of the success at the mine.
Accepting the award maintenance engineering manager Paul Stephan congratulated Moranbah North CHPP Manager Clinton Vanderkruk and his team on the achievement.
Stephan said the operation has gone six years without an LTI by taking each day as it comes.
“It’s about understanding the day to day, if you get to a month there’s no reason why you can’t get to a year and then it’s about understanding how you got to a year,” he said.
“If you’ve done it for a year there’s no reason why you can’t do it for ten years.”
Stephan explained while the wash plant is celebrating six years, it’s now aiming higher.
“While we’re talking about six years, we’re looking at seven, eight and nine years,” he said.
Culture plays a big part when it comes to safety on site, Stephan explained.
“It plays a big part, it’s a team aspect, once people believe that they can work safely, they actually own the process and they don’t want to spoil that process,” he said.
“It’s a major part of the culture, it’s a pride of owning that culture onsite.”
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Looking ahead Stephan said the wash plant is looking to communicate its safety learnings to other processes on site.
“I think the wash plant is already there and in the underground operation we’re well on the way to get there as well,” he said.
“It’s about having those people in the CHPP understanding what they’ve done and communicating that to the other processes.
“As a mine, it’s not just about the CHPP, it’s about understanding as a whole mine understanding how we get to that six or seven years of safety improvement.”