The facility was officially opened today by Queensland Resources Council chief executive Michael Roche at an event held at the Myne Start premises in Mackay.

Mastermyne managing director Tony Caruso said the Myne Start Underground Training Complex would provide inexperienced underground miners (“cleanskins”) the opportunity to complete in-depth training in a unique simulated training facility.

“The Myne Start centre will expedite the skills development of cleanskins to underground miners, and is our response to the increasing demand on our labour force,” Caruso said.

“It will also provide a great opportunity for Mackay locals to get into underground mining as a career.

“Best of all, graduates from the Myne Start program will have a far greater appreciation of all the safety requirements in the underground environment they will be entering, which will reduce risk and make them more productive sooner.”

Training participants will undergo four weeks of specialised underground training in situations that have been set up to replicate underground working conditions.

The first training program commenced on September 27 and graduates will start work at Moranbah North and Oaky Creek coal mines in early November.

One of the first participants in the program, Dale McMahon, came from being a snowboarding instructor in Victoria to a bricklayer in Cairns, to now being ready to start a new career in underground mining.

“On a day off from work in Cairns I heard a Mastermyne advertisement and now here I am in Mackay, trained up and ready to start my new job,” he said.

Other participants have come from as far as Western Australia and New Zealand to undergo the mine readiness program.

It is expected that a total of 100 participants will successfully graduate from the training program in the first 12 months of operation.

Mastermyne’s senior management team has combined experience of nearly 200 years in the underground coal mining industry.

This management team, combined with a skilled workforce, underpins the future growth of the organisation and is considered one of Mastermyne’s points of difference, Caruso said.

Mastermyne’s main line of business is providing services to the longwall sector, especially in Queensland.

The company has an umbrella contract of services for Anglo’s Moranbah North mine and contracts for drift construction, inseam and panel development at Rio Tinto’s Kestrel mine extension project, while it also holds the main development services contract at the mine for stone drivage.

At BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance’s Crinum East operation, Mastermyne has contracts for ventilation services as well as maingate conveyor installation and recovery.

At Vale’s Carborough Downs, Mastermyne holds the contract to remove, relocate, retract, install and extend the conveyors.

In New South Wales, Mastermyne undertakes development works at BHP Billiton’s Dendrobium longwall mine and outbye services at its West Cliff operation.

Shares in Mastermyne, which listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in May, were down by 0.5c to $1.225 in morning trade.