Redpath’s Cowal underground contract: design and scheduling notes for engineers
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on International Mining – News
30 Second Briefing
Redpath Mining has secured a five-year underground mining contract at Evolution Mining’s Cowal Gold Operations in New South Wales, with an early ramp-up scheduled for 2026 and full-scale development and production from July 2026. The contractor is already recruiting across multiple underground roles, signalling a build-out of crews and equipment ahead of portal establishment and development drilling. For geotechnical and mining engineers, the timeline points to imminent demand for ground support design, ventilation planning and production scheduling integrated with Cowal’s existing open-pit infrastructure.
Technical Brief
- Five-year underground mining services contract covers Cowal Gold Operations’ new underground mine in New South Wales.
- Early recruitment for multiple underground roles suggests staggered crew build-up aligned with progressive development fronts.
Our Take
Within our 374 Mining stories, New South Wales gold items like Cowal Gold Operations are relatively few compared with Western Australian gold coverage, so this contract signals continued underground investment in a state more often associated with coal and base metals in our database.
Redpath Mining appears less frequently than the major Australian-based contractors in our 736 Projects/Contract Award-tagged pieces, suggesting Evolution Mining is diversifying away from some of the most commonly featured underground service providers for this 2026 ramp-up window.
The early- to mid-2026 development and production timeline at Cowal Gold Operations aligns with several gold projects in our database targeting similar start dates, which may tighten the labour market for experienced underground crews in Australia just as this contract moves into full-scale execution.
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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