Glencore moves forward with Newlands rehabilitation

The achievement marks almost 1000 hectares of rehabilitated mined land across Glencore’s coal operations in Queensland and New South Wales.

Newlands’ rehabilitation is the eighth certification Glencore has received for its coal operations and sixth in Queensland.

The company has previously rehabilitated 73 hectares at Newlands in 2017, almost 400 hectares at Rolleston in 2018 and 2019, 99 hectares at Collinsville in 2020 and 132 hectares at Oaky Creek in 2017.

According to Newlands operations manager Clayton Stansbie, the successful rehabilitation was a significant milestone for the company.

“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,” he said.

“This is not only reflected in the government certification process, but also in our annual rehabilitation results: Newlands has rehabilitated more than 100 hectares 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.”

Newlands is the first operation in the Bowen Basin to achieve certification for rehabilitation of coal mine overburden spoil in 2017.

Glencore general manager of environment and community John Watson said the rehabilitation of its sites are delivering strong performances.

“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 20,000 hectares of rehabilitation, equivalent to almost the entire city of Sydney.”