Australia's Mining Monthly is making some of its most important coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic freely available to readers. For more coverage, please see our COVID-19 hub. To subscribe to AMM, click here.

The company is getting ready for when business in China gets back to normal after the impacts of COVID-19.

Located on the remote Western Cape York in Far North Queensland, Bauxite Hills goes on care and maintenance between December and March due to the wet weather and as such only a limited amount of staff work on site over summer.

Metro Mining managing director and CEO Simon Finnis told the market according to the long-term forecast it should be smooth sailing on the restart, with customers confirming the scheduled shipping times met their requirements.

Finnis said the shipping schedule for the 2020 first quarter of operations had been finalised, with all production planned until the end of June spoken for.

About 1 million tonnes of bauxite is expected to be produced and shipped during this period.

Finnis said to ameliorate business interruptions and any impact COVID-19 may have on production and to manage the health and wellbeing of company personnel and the community access to, and travel around, the mine site has been significantly modified.

Face-to-face meetings have also been banned, he said.

Bauxite Hills has several indigenous employees who travel from communities that are especially vulnerable to the virus, which the company has to consider.

Finnis said it was constantly monitoring any changes to travel and other restrictions to those communities so it could adapt accordingly.

He said during these challenging times the company was doing everything possible to address issues as they arose.