Playing a pivotal role in St Barbara’s expansion projects

Underpinned by strong collaboration, we supported the delivery of St. Barbara's strategic growth program across their operational regions in Western Australia, Papua New Guinea, and Atlantic Canada.

The company’s growth portfolio included five major expansion projects:

• Simberi Sulphide Project - US$170 million Conversion of the existing oxide mining operation to a sulphide operation, through new milling and floatation circuit to produce concentrate.
• Beaver Dam Development - US$100 million of the development of new pit, crushing facility and haul route for processing at the Torquoy.
• Fifteen Mile Stream Development - US$200 million of the development of a greenfield, mill, flotation and concentrate circuit for transport to the Torquoy Gold Room.
• Cochrane Hill Development – New greenfield facility.
• Gwalia Province Plan Development - US$165 million development of the Tower Hill and Harbour Lights deposits, expansion of the Gwalia mill and new Albion Circuit.

We led the project and study management of the above projects, working as part of an integrated project team with St Barbara. This provided the governance, structure and rigor to develop the growth portfolio and enabled St Barbara to make strategic decisions around the direction of the business.

In addition to the delivery of major projects, operational support was provided to each of the operating sites.

At the Simberi operations, this included debottlenecking the crushing and grinding circuit to improvement plant performance, conducting site wide condition assessments to allow capital to be deployed to key critical items, such as mill, electrical infrastructure, and structural recovery.

The emergency replacement of the deep-sea mine tailing placements (DSTP) saw Beca providing technical expertise throughout this project. This included project management, design, construction management and commissioning for the new 400m long, 132m deep subsea pipeline. Despite the challenges of COVID, our largely remote team managed a successful installation that allowed the plant to resume production in 26 weeks.

We are proud to have played a pivotal role assisting St Barbara implement wider corporate strategies. These include existing plant expansions; province plans and the development of carbon reduction roadmaps enabling them to deliver on their goal of being carbon neutral by 2050.