The company, which last week sacked a contractor for safety breaches at its Ohai open cut mine, is increasingly being scrutinised for its safety record after the Pike River disaster in New Zealand in which 29 miners were killed.

Solid Energy underground operations general manager Craig Smith has taken over as Spring Creek operations acting general manager, while mine manager Greg Duncan has been seconded to focus on improving systems and bedding in changes.

On February 20, following three safety incidents, the NZ Department of Labour’s Mines Inspectorate issued Spring Creek with a prohibition notice.

Even though the notice was lifted on February 23, Solid Energy kept all but essential underground operations on hold while it completed its investigations into the incidents.

Solid Energy chief operating officer Barry Bragg said follow-up actions from the investigations were underway and the company had given the go-ahead for the mine to begin the return to full underground operations.

“Along with the mine management team, I’ve been meeting all of the mine staff to discuss our health and safety expectations and the changes we are proposing at the mine to meet those expectations,” Bragg said.

“A partial resumption of underground mining operations has begun today with on-the-job training in the changes to our work procedures and checking for compliance with those procedures.

“We will resume full production once we are satisfied the changes are effective.

“That is likely to be towards the end of this month (March),” he said.

“We are also mobilising additional health and safety resources and engineering capability to Spring Creek to help with the changes and the large development program which is the mine’s operational focus at present.”

For the teams at Spring Creek, the main operational focus is on driving roadways and installing infrastructure to enable a new resource area to be mined.

The development work is expected to take several months to complete.

The company expects when full-scale extraction resumes later in 2012, the new resource block will safely deliver about 2.2 million tonnes of coal over three years.