Leighton Contractors division, HWE Mining, has been awarded a contract by Solid Energy to remove the overburden and extract coal at Rotowaro mine. Rotowaro is situated 10 kilometres west of Huntley on the North Island of New Zealand, and was first mined as an underground mine in 1915 after a branch railway and a bridge over the Waikato River were completed. The present open-cut mine opened in 1958. HWE Mining have been working at the Rotowaro Coal Mine since 2006.

• provision of statutory manager
• management of safety and health, environment, community affairs, plant, procurement and waste, human and industrial relations
• preparation of costing and optimisation studies
• long term mine planning & development and short to medium term scheduling
• design, construction and maintenance of earthworks infrastructure (e.g. dams, roads, drains, stockpile pads, hardstands) and structural infrastructure (e.g. workshops, offices, fuel facilities)
• design and maintenance of services infrastructure (e.g. power, water, communications)
• plant maintenance, coal quality sampling and control, surveying and set out
• clearing, grubbing and topsoil removal
• drilling and blasting, loading, hauling and dumping waste and coal
• pit de-watering and on-site water management
• operation and maintenance of processing plant structural infrastructure (e.g. crushers, processing plant, stackers, reclaimers, producting loading facilities)
• transport infrastructure (e.g. railway, road transport, shipping) loading, and 
• waste dump profiling, selective capping placement and topsoil placement.