Xstrata Copper North Queensland.pdf - Mount Isa Mines

Chief Operating Officer’s message
The beginning of 2011 has been a difficult time for our state and the nation, and many Queenslanders have
been facing tough challenges as they deal with a number of devastating natural disasters – major flooding
occurred across Queensland in December and January and Tropical Cyclone Yasi hit Far North Queensland
in February. We are pleased to report that our people and their families remained safe during these events.
Steve de Kruijff
As a key mining operation in Queensland,
Xstrata is committed to supporting our
state’s communities, and we were pleased
to contribute $2 million to the Queensland
Premier’s Disaster Relief Appeal to assist
Queenslanders to get back on their feet after
these events.
Our operations also continued to play an
important role in the economy of our region,
and we contributed more than $1.3 billion to
the Queensland economy in 2010.
Our sustainable
development and
operational performance
Overall, 2010 was a very positive year for
the Xstrata Copper North Queensland
Division as we continued our commitment
to investing in our business, the community
and our people. Through sheer hard work,
dedication and importantly great teamwork
we achieved outstanding results in both
our sustainable development practices and
operational performance, and a number of
key achievements are highlighted here.
Safety performance and recognition
Although we were not successful in achieving
our safety improvement targets for 2010, we
continued to improve our safety performance
by reducing our total recordable injury
frequency rate (TRIFR) by 11% from 2009
to 7.4. Our lost time injury frequency rate
(LTIFR) reduced by 22% from 2009 to 0.7 and
in May we celebrated achieving in excess of
4.5 million hours lost time injury (LTI) free.
Our Townsville copper refinery was awarded
the Innovation Award at the annual
Queensland Resources Council’s Safety and
Health Conference for its innovative Copper
Nodule Catcher system (read more about this
innovation in the case study on page 41).
Corporate Social Involvement (CSI)
In 2010, we invested more than $1.7 million
in our CSI Program, which comprises the
Xstrata Community Partnership Program
North Queensland (XCPPNQ) and a
sponsorship and donations program. Through
the XCPPNQ, we provided almost $1.1 million
towards community partnerships in the north
Queensland communities of Mount Isa,
Cloncurry and Townsville.
Through our sponsorship and donations
program, we contributed more than $614,000
to community organisations for various
community initiatives and events including the
Xstrata Mount Isa Rotary Rodeo, the Xstrata
Mount Isa Mining Expo, the Townsville Greek
Fest and the Ernest Henry Mining Curry Merry
Muster Festival.
In addition to these programs, we are also
supporting a number of social infrastructure
projects in Mount Isa, Townsville and
Cloncurry, including the Cloncurry Community
Precinct project and the new Mount Isa
Dental Health Building. Since 2006, we
have contributed over $5.5 million towards
the development of a range of social
infrastructure projects.
Our CSI programs are very important to us
and our north Queensland communities,
where residents are seeing real benefits
from the wide range of initiatives that our
programs support. It also highlights our
commitment to sustainable development
through ensuring the communities where we
operate are benefiting from our operations
both in the short and long term.
Environmental performance
We are pleased to report that no significant
environmental incidents occurred at our
north Queensland copper operations during
2010. We made significant progress with our
committed Regulatory Transition studies and
implemented a number of key environmental
improvements such as the completion and
commissioning of the Death Adder Gully
stormwater management system at our
Mount Isa site, and completion of a new
water recycling project (read more about this
in our case study on page 95). Xstrata Mount
Isa Mines also reported substantial decreases
in five of the six emissions compounds to
the Federal Government’s National Pollutant
Inventory (NPI) for which it was the major
contributor for the 2009–10 period (visit
www.npi.gov.au to read more about this).
Operational performance and
recognition
During the year, we either met or exceeded
the majority of our production targets
across the business. At Mount Isa, the
copper concentrator delivered an additional
3,000 tonnes of copper through its innovative
mill recovery project, while in our copper
smelter we successfully completed the
smelter rebrick shutdown on schedule with
no recordable injuries, which paved the way
for the second highest ever half year anode
production of 125,000 tonnes. Townsville’s
copper refinery also had a year with record
production of cathode, 3% up from the
previous record year in 2009.
Progress was made on Ernest Henry Mining’s
$589 million extension project comprising
a shaft underground mine and magnetite
processing facility announced at the end
of 2009. Despite shaft underground mine
project activities being suspended in June
4 XSTRATA COPPER NORTH QUEENSLAND