MineSpace, a co-working area for mining and exploration companies, formally opened on Monday after months of planning.

The facility offers shared desk areas, offices, a cafe style kitchen, large balcony, training room, tech corner and boardroom, which can be hired on a daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis.

MineSpace co-founder Adrian Large told affiliated publication MiningNewsPremium he came across the concept of shared collaboration offices at the start of the year.

The founders picked a spot in West Perth and commandeered a floor and while the idea was well-received, they stumbled across early issues.

“It was in a really nice spot but the issue was that it was very open plan, so a lot of people didn’t like the fact that they could see what everyone else was doing because they are Australian Securities Exchange-listed,” Large said.

“That was a big issue so we stopped that idea because even though the location was good, we needed to rethink how it was going to happen.

“So we pushed it into three different categories – so there is the hot-desking, the partition desks and the offices.”

MineSpace can provide office space to up to six people from just $A20,000 a year, making it an attractive option for small and medium miners.

Large describes it as an ecosystem, which fits the blueprint of how companies evolve.

“You look at a start-up and they can move to a partition desk or when they’ve made it they can move to an office or people can start in offices straight away,” he said.

“Basically the success of the company can still stay within Minespace until they get to a point where they want to move out and have their own building or their own floor space.”

Another drawcard for companies is the availability of leading software on a pay-as-you-go basis.

“We wanted to know what people would want in the office space, so the software is really expensive for start-up companies, so we came up with the idea of a portal, which provides a lot of exploration and geoscience companies the ability to pay monthly rather than the full year,” Large said.

“So we went to the software companies and struck deals with them to be able to provide this cloud-based portal, so combining the space with the software gives companies a lot more reason to spend money on other things like actual drilling and finding ore deposits, which is what they need to do.

“You can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on space and software.”

As well as space and software, MineSpace also offers other outsourced services like receptionists, accountants and tenement and database management services.

“They’re all things that are quite costly and we can provide them as part-time services,” Large said.

“We figured that group – and we’re looking at human resources at the moment – was really important to companies to act like a normal company and feel like a normal company without requiring full-time employees to fulfil those roles.

“So just like the space is pay-as-you-go and the software is pay-as-you-go, basically the employees are pay-as-you-go on a contract basis.”

And to ensure a thriving workspace, MineSpace will promote “paper bag lunches” featuring industry leaders and a tech corner where companies can show off their latest technology.

Large said there were other projects in the pipeline for MineSpace that would be announced in the coming months.

MineSpace is located on Level 1, 1292 Hay Street in West Perth.