Are Heavy Equipment Fitters in demand in New Caledonia?

Although there are many qualified and highly experienced workers and technicians in New Caledonia, the island was never expecting such large projects as the current and ongoing mining projects, therefore all of the local qualified workforce is already stretched to the limit.

Employment of local labour first is a must for these giant mining projects however foreign nationals are and will be in high demand to fill positions that remain vacant because there are simply not enough qualified local workers.

So heavy equipment fitters are certainly needed in New Caledonia.

There are 3 large mining Companies in New Caledonia, the S.L.N. (Societe Le Nickel) French owned Company (ERAMET) which has been operating for the past 100 years. Currently, the SLN is the largest single employer in New Caledonia. More recently, Vale Inco, a subsidiary of Vale International began operations at Goro, in the South West of the main island. The smelter is now operational and full production should start in the very near future. At Koniambo, up North East of the island, the Koniambo SAS projects if going full speed ahead. At the end of 2010 the site had some 4000 men and women from all nationalities working to build the smelter and operate the mine. During 2011, of the 6000 to 7000 workers that will be on site, 3000 will be from Asia, 1200 Chinese will work on assembling the smelter, and 1800 Koreans, Thai, and Filipinos will work on building the Electrical Plant. These figures are provisional considering the amount of work to be done.

Major MINING projects

Vale Inco New Caledonia

During the construction stage as during the operational stage, Vale Inco New Caledonia has progressively created hundreds of direct and indirect jobs, hence contributing to the development of New Caledonia. Vale Inco will be an open-cut mining operation located on the Plateau of Goro. The ore will be extracted and hauled by dump-trucks to the smelter located North East of the mine.

Operations:

• 4 million metric tonnes of dry ore extracted each year
• 12 million metric tonnes of earth moved each year
• Length of operation planned for 29 years
• Pits will be filled and revegetated at the end of each cycle of the mining operations.

Koniambo S.A.S

Operated as a joint venture by the Group Xstrata and the S.M.S.P. a fully owned New Caledonian Corporation, the Koniambo mine is located on the northern part of the main island. The extraction and transportation of the ore and dead soil from the massif of Koniambo will take place with conventional hydraulic shovels of 5.6 m3 and 50 T dump-trucks. The scouring of the mine, a preparatory stage prior to commercial operations will start about 12 months before the metallurgical production. The smelter will be fully operational in mid-2012 and a 60.000 M/T of ferrous nickel alloy production is expected from 2013-2014.

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