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    Ausenco’s Hillside copper-gold EPCM: design and risk notes for project engineers

    April 1, 2026|

    Reviewed by Tom Sullivan

    Ausenco’s Hillside copper-gold EPCM: design and risk notes for project engineers

    First reported on International Mining – News

    30 Second Briefing

    Ausenco has secured the EPCM contract for Rex Minerals’ Hillside copper-gold project on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula, about 150 km west of Adelaide, one of the country’s largest undeveloped copper assets. The mandate covers full engineering, procurement and construction management for the greenfield operation, positioning Ausenco to define plant layout, materials handling systems and tailings and water management infrastructure. Geotechnical and civil design decisions at Hillside will be closely watched, given its scale and coastal setting with associated foundation, groundwater and environmental constraints.

    Technical Brief

    • EPCM scope enables Ausenco to integrate process plant, tailings, water and materials handling into one design package.
    • Centralised EPCM contract should streamline constructability reviews and value engineering during detailed design.
    • Single EPCM provider reduces interface risk between process design, civil works and non-process infrastructure.
    • Ausenco’s mandate typically covers contractor prequalification, tendering and construction supervision for major earthworks and structural packages.
    • Early EPCM appointment allows geotechnical, hydrological and coastal constraints to be embedded in plant layout decisions.
    • Hillside’s greenfield status means all haul roads, waste dumps and TSF embankments will be designed from first principles.

    Our Take

    Ausenco’s EPCM role at the Hillside copper-gold project in South Australia follows its recent feasibility and implementation work on the Ikkari gold project in Finland and the Jervois nickel-cobalt refinery in Brazil, signalling that operators are favouring the firm for complex, multi-commodity builds across very different regulatory environments.

    Within our mining-projects coverage, South Australian copper assets on the Yorke Peninsula tend to face relatively fewer land access and infrastructure hurdles than more remote Australian copper districts, which could shorten the critical path from EPCM award to first construction for Hillside.

    Copper-gold projects like Hillside feature prominently in the 549 keyword-matched pieces in our database, and this clustering suggests that developers are still prioritising copper-dominant builds with gold credits as a hedge against copper price volatility when locking in long-lead EPCM contracts.

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    Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.

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