Completion of the Tahmoor Colliery sale in New South Wales to the GEAR/M Resources Consortium moves the underground coking coal mine closer to full restart, with about 150 workers already back on site undertaking initial mining activities. The new operator plans a staged ramp-up, progressively recalling additional personnel and recommissioning equipment to restore longwall production. Geotechnical and operational teams will be focused on revalidating ground control, ventilation and gas management systems after the shutdown period before returning to full output.

WIM Resource has secured a mining licence for the Avonbank mineral sands project in western Victoria, located about 15km north-east of Horsham, to extract a heavy mineral assemblage including zircon, titanium minerals and rare earth elements. The approval follows a formal assessment by Resources Victoria, clearing the way for large-scale dredge or dry mining of strandline-style deposits typical of the Murray Basin. For geotechnical and processing teams, the mix of zircon and rare earth-bearing minerals signals complex separation flowsheets and tailings management in fine-grained sands.

Excavator bucket maintenance is shifting from ad hoc onsite crack and wear repairs to planned, lifecycle-based strategies led by Austin Engineering. General manager sales APAC/EMEA Brad Higgins and key account manager Troy [surname not given] use real-world case studies to compare reactive weld-and-patch approaches with scheduled structural rebuilds and liner replacements. The move towards planned cycles aims to stabilise downtime windows, standardise repair scopes and improve fatigue performance of large mining buckets, with direct implications for shutdown planning and wear-material selection.