The company will make a total of 43 roles redundant at its HVS manufacturing, assembly and distribution facility in Heatherbrae, just north of Newcastle.

The redundancy process has started and will be finalised once the voluntary process has been completed, president of Sandvik Asia Pacific Rowan Melrose said.

“Unfortunately, current market conditions have meant a decreasing order intake for our market-leading load-and-haul products for the coal mining sector,” he said.

“This decrease in capital sales means we will have had to make a number of positions redundant at Heatherbrae.”

Since the company announced redundancies at the site in December, orders have slowed further, Melrose said.

“Over the past few months, Sandvik management has done everything it can to avoid further redundancies at our Newcastle facilities; we have restructured our workflows, redeployed employees to other worksites and cut overtime to reduce costs as much as possible in order to keep our trained workforce,” he said.

“Unfortunately, these steps have not been sufficient, as we have seen a further reduction in outbound orders during 2013; this means we have been forced to make these additional changes.”

Over the past few years, Sandvik has invested significantly in the Newcastle and Hunter region – and has a long-term commitment to this region and the community, according to Melrose.

“From a personal viewpoint, I deeply regret having to make this announcement; I began my career with Sandvik working in our Newcastle regional facilities and I have personally worked with many of the employees in these operations over the years,” he said.

All Sandvik employees affected by this announcement will be offered counselling and outplacement services through Sandvik’s Employee Assistance Program.

“These very difficult decisions are a direct consequence of changing conditions in the global resources business, as well as other sectors, and the world-wide focus by mining and resources companies on reducing their costs,” Melrose said.

“In turn, this is having an impact on suppliers of equipment and services to the industry. In this respect, Sandvik is no exception.

“At the same time, we would like to assure our customers, both in Australia and globally, that our levels of service and support will not be affected by this decision.”

These changes reduce the overall Sandvik workforce in the region by approximately 3%.