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Event Wrap: BBMC Luncheon February 2025

18 February 2025 | BBMC Events

Production, projects and future plans: Stanmore’s 2025 outlook

Guests at the first event in the 2025 Bowen Basin Mining Club (BBMC) networking luncheon series last Thursday were treated to an up-close look at Stanmore’s operations and plans for the future, with a keynote from Doug O’Brien, General Manager Major Projects.

The sold-out event, sponsored by LAAMP and supported by Hillcock Industrial and Civeo, dived deep into Stanmore’s three core operating assets in the Bowen Basin: South Walker Creek, Poitrel and the Isaac Plains Complex.

In the last 12 months, Stanmore has focused on setting up their Bowen Basin portfolio for growth, with targets exceeded across the board, and production records broken. It hasn’t been a ‘business as usual’ focus, with the Isaac Plains Complex shifting their mining focus from Isaac Plains East to Isaac Downs, and a capacity expansion at South Walker Creek taking that operation to 9.4 mtpa ROM coal, and 7Mtpa saleable product.

2025 caps off several years of intensive capital investment for Stanmore, spending more than $360 million since 2022. Within this timeframe, all projects were executed on-time or ahead of budget, along with $40 million in savings delivered.

A major project close to O’Brien’s heart has been the MRA2C creek diversion at South Walker Creek – essentially an 8-kilometre long drain, which unlocks 58Mt of high-quality, low strip ratio coal at the site. Working with contractors, Stanmore undertook 6.5 million cubic metres of bulk earthworks to construct 8.5km of creek diversion and 6.5km of flood protection levees. The project also included the construction of 7.5 km of powerlines, 21km of water pipelines, and 230 hectares of land rehabilitation, with 52 pieces of construction equipment on site at the project’s peak.

“It’s not often we eagerly await the rainy season at a mine site, but to see the creek diversion working we certainly did!,” said O’Brien. And the rain started just in time, with a matter of days between the creek diversion project’s completion and significant rainfall.

As part of the capital works program, O’Brien spoke about working collaboratively with contractors to optimise design during construction, rather than setting a price and then holding them to it – a process that saw Stanmore realise more than US$30 million in savings over the creek diversion project alone.

“Value is generated at the front-end – front-end engineering of a project is where you generate savings, and the delivery of the project is where you protect those savings. Low price isn’t everything, it’s about the attitude of the people you get through the door and their willingness to find solutions and keep improving.”

O’Brien spoke about several interesting decarbonisation projects underway to complement Stanmore’s operating portfolio, including South Walker Creek’s gas-to-power pilot, partly funded through the QLD Govt’s Low Emissions Investment Partnership program and capturing future fugitive gas emissions to provide a baseload power source for the site. The company is also leveraging landholding at South Walker Creek to establish a Pongamia plantation, researching the plant’s use case as a feedstock for renewable fuels in partnership with Idemitsu and Terviva.

Looking to what’s next for operations at Stanmore, O’Brien detailed future fleet upgrades, project extensions and mining services arrangements to set up future years of increased production and efficient strip ratios – returning to a lower capital expenditure profile with all sites now positioned for future growth.

He also covered the organic expansion of several of Stanmore’s Bowen Basin projects, particularly the strategic ‘Moranbah Complex’, a natural-life extension of Isaac Downs, and the potential at Eagle Downs, which could be the company’s first underground longwall mine. There’s also exploration at Lancewood, targeting the Goonyella Middle seams.

Suppliers hoping to get involved with existing and future projects can expect to work with autonomous on-site general managers, along with the centralised Stanmore procurement team. Each site runs a little differently, due to fit for purpose operating models, and O’Brien says that understanding what’s happening and who the key players are is important.

The next luncheon in the BBMC 2025 Networking Series will be held in Mackay on March 27.