Situated in the northern reaches of Queensland’s Bowen Basin coalfields, 150km south west of Mackay, Burton Coal Mine utilises a terrace mining truck and shovel operation – the first of its kind in the Bowen Basin.

Portman Mining Limited awarded Thiess the design, construct and operate mining contract in January 1996. As part of the financing arrangement, Thiess secured a 5% equity stake in the venture.

RAG Australia Coal purchased Portman Mining Ltd’s 95% stake in the project in December 1999 and in April 2004, Peabody Energy Australia purchased RAG Australia Coal’s 95% interest in the Burton Coal Project.

Hard coking and thermal coal extracted from Burton is exported to customers in Asia, Europe, India and South America.

Thiess is responsible for the design and construction of all mine infrastructure and operations, including mining, coal processing and loading the coal into rail wagons for transport to the port.

The initial infrastructure contract involved the development of a 400tph coal processing plant, rail loop and train loading facility at Mallawa, 138 person accommodation village and mine office, water supply dam and distribution system, and mine access and product coal haul roads.

In 1998, the Burton pit depth was increased from 80m to 110m. Additional infrastructure to cater for the pit expansion included a second 400tph coal processing module, a truck receival and skyline stockpiling facility at Mallawa and an expansion of village accommodation and mine site facilities.

The Mine now extends over four operating pits, from Burton in the North to Wallanbah in the South, covering a distance of approximately 28km. The depth to the top of coal in the Burton, Ellensfield and Wallanbah pits is currently 100m, 120m and 90m respectively. The mining operation is not continuous, with Ellensfield and Wallanbah pits just over 2km long and 15km apart. In October 2004 the project added Plumtree to open-cut operations.

The pits operate as satellite operations from the main industrial area, with coal brought from each to the coal processing plant for blending and washing, maintaining a coal feed rate of approximately 5.5Mt per annum.

The initial mine development was for an annual production rate of 2 million sales tonnes per annum of coking and thermal coal combined. Following the mine expansion the annual production capacity has lifted to in excess of 4 million product tonnes per annum.

Raw coal is currently hauled from the top of the Burton pit with two double trailer road trains (180 tonne capacity), and is hauled from the top of Wallanbah pit by five trailer road trains to the industrial area for processing. Product coal is hauled approximately 36km south along the Mallawa haul road by five trailer road trains (two tonne capacity) to the train loadout facility.

The current workforce is made up of 230 Thiess employees and 100 subcontractor employees.

* For long term contracts extending beyond five years, the total contract value shown includes the value of work completed to date plus five years worth of work in hand.