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As foreshadowed by MiningNews.net in May, HWE won the six-year mining services contract at Ashton after a competitive tender for the $110 million greenfields development.
Starting early next year, the contract involves mining 13.7 million tonnes of coal and removing 68 million bank cubic metres of overburden.
White plans to develop Ashton as a semi-soft open cut operation targeting Asian steel mills.
The opencut will produce up to 2.4 million tonnes per year over six or seven years, to be followed by a long-term underground phase producing around 3Mtpa.
White has approval to increase the run-of-mine throughput up to 5.2Mtpa if warranted by the market.
HWE managing director Bruce James said the contract win supported the group's strategy of expanding in coal, particularly in eastern Australia.
"We already operate a number of mines in the Hunter Region including Bowens Road North and Duralie for Stratford Coal in the adjacent Gloucester Valley, and achieved coal revenue in the last financial year of $182.4 million," he said.
James said that HWE's total work on hand now stands at $1.6 billion, up from $1.1 billion in December 2002 and $1.4 billion in June 2003.
The group also has a further $350 million of contracts under "final negotiation", suggesting further increases in the near term.
One contract under discussion is HWE's existing job at Portman's Koolyanobbing iron ore mine in Western Australia.
The $170 million job finished in September, but Portman says it has kept HWE on while development commences on the Northern Tenements expansion project.
"We've rolled the contract over for 18 months," said Barry Eldridge, Portman's managing director.
"We're drilling out the northern tenements at Koolyanobbing and until that is finished it is hard to say what reserves we have, and what the production rate will be in the future," he told MNN.
"We are in no position to define a scope of work, so we thought it best to negotiate a contract rollover."
Eldridge said that Portman plans to call for tenders on the expanded Koolyanobbing operation by late next year or early 2005.
MiningNews.net
