About 100 new permanent employees will start work at the Gunnedah Basin project between now and February.

The related recruitment campaign for these jobs which included production operator and maintenance technician positions had clocked up more than 1800 applications within the month of July.

“Welcoming the first new permanent employees to the Whitehaven team signals the start of operations on site working towards the first railing of coal in March 2015,” Whitehaven managing director and CEO Paul Flynn said.

“As a proudly Australian company that calls the Gunnedah region its home, the fact that new permanent jobs are being created shows the economic benefits are really starting to flow to the local area. More than 75% of Whitehaven’s full time workforce is currently based in the local area and we are focused on maintaining or increasing that proportion overall.”

At full capacity the mine is expected to employ 450 people and it is also aiming to ensure that 10% of this workforce is of indigenous descent within five years.

Last month the $767 million Maules Creek project was considered more than 50% complete and on track for first coal exports to be railed in March 2015.

The open cut project is targeting a rate of 6 million tonnes per annum of coal production over the first 12 months and has approval to ramp up to 13Mtpa run of mine.