Glencore has rehabilitated mining land at Newlands Open Cut mine

Rehabilitation of the areas has met completion criteria for post-mining agricultural purposes, including cattle grazing.

Glencore's Newlands Open Cut operation in Central Queensland has had 138ha of rehabilitation certified. It means that almost 1,000ha of rehabilitated mined land across Glencore's coal operations has now been signed-off by Government.

A global mining giant has rehabilitated almost 1000ha of mined land across its Queensland and New South Wales operations.

Glencore has certified another 138ha of rehabilitation at Newlands Open Cut mine, south of Collinsville, which it states was the first operation in Bowen Basin mining history to achieve certification for rehabilitation of coal mine overburden spoil in 2017.

The latest certification at the site relates to land that was mined in the 1990s, with regulators determining that rehabilitation of the areas has met completion criteria for post-mining agricultural purposes, including cattle grazing.

“It’s an achievement that is being celebrated across our entire workforce because integration of rehabilitation into our daily mine planning and operations is the key to delivering these outcomes,” Newlands operations manager Clayton Stansbie said.

“This is not only reflected in the government certification process, but also in our annual rehabilitation results.

“Newlands has rehabilitated more than 100ha of mined land every year since 2017.

“It means we are making significant progress on our rehabilitation work while active mining continues rather than leaving a large commitment at the end of mining.”

The Newlands achievement is the eighth successful certification application by a Glencore coal operation and the sixth at a Queensland site, following previous sign-off on 73ha at Newlands (2017), almost 400ha at Rolleston (2018 and 2019), 99ha at Collinsville (2020) and 132ha at Oaky Creek (2021).

NSW sites Westside (38ha in 2020) and Ulan (52ha in 2020) have also achieved sign-off on areas of rehabilitation.

Glencore’s general manager of environment and community, John Watson, said all sites were delivering strong performance with rehabilitation.

“We understand and accept that Governments and our communities expect us to deliver progressive, quality rehabilitation and our results are showing a continued focus on those outcomes,” he said.

“In total, our sites have now completed more than 20,000ha of rehabilitation, equivalent to almost the entire city of Sydney.”

Originally published as Glencore has rehabilitated mining land at Newlands Open Cut mine