Eight storage silos for the base materials are fed by a complex 3D maze of conveyors from multiple crushing and screening plants.

As you approach Boral’s Peppertree Quarry, a two-hour drive from Sydney, it’s immediately obvious this is no ordinary quarry operation.

There are no stockpiles of different products, no loaders and dump trucks moving material around, no lines of tip trucks collecting material for delivery to building and construction sites back in Sydney – and very little noise.

Instead, eight gleaming stainless steel towers soar into the sky – storage silos for the base materials that combine to make up the numerous different product mixes the site can produce.

These silos are fed by a complex 3D maze of conveyors from the multiple crushing and screening plants housed in an array of structures – which in turn are fed from a single, massive stockpile bringing in the raw crushed material from the quarry pit itself.

The quarry’s entire output leaves the site by train – four trainloads a day, every day – with multiple product mixes in every trainload. Not a single kilogram of product leaves the site by road.

And yet a single person can control this entire processing operation.

The whole site has just 30 people running it across a 24/7 operation; compare this with equivalent output conventional quarry operations, which typically require more personnel than that, along with multiple items of mobile equipment.

‘Generational investment’

So what was behind Boral’s decision to go far beyond anything that had been done in Australia previously and build a world’s best practice operation?

A unique combination of history, geography, geology and environment – along with some equally unique challenges – has resulted in the company’s new Peppertree processing plant.

David Bolton, Boral Construction Materials’ general manager of quarries for New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, said for many years the company had known it would need to replace its Penrith Lakes Scheme quarry, on the western outskirts of Sydney.

“Penrith Lakes supplied Sydney with construction materials for over 100 years but was exhausted by 2015,” he said.

Quarrying at Penrith Lakes officially ceased in July 2016 after almost 130 years of extraction.

Boral needed a replacement quarry close enough to Sydney to economically transport product to the metropolitan region and to the demanding standards of its customers – from homeowners, small tradespeople and builders to multinational civil and building contractors and their clients.

While 30 personnel run the whole site, a single person can control the entire processing operation.

“We identified a large deposit of granodiorite adjacent to our existing limestone quarry near Marulan, south of Sydney,” Bolton said.

Granodiorite is a very hard and durable rock, making it ideal for concrete and asphalt applications.

“Our Peppertree Quarry is a generational investment, and will secure Boral and the Sydney construction materials market for many, many years to come,” Bolton said.

“We were granted consent to extract and process 3.5 million tonnes a year. This consent is for an initial period of 30 years, but the resource at Peppertree will last significantly longer than that.”

One issue Boral faced in the move from Penrith Lakes to Peppertree was the fact the new site had no sand resources.

Accordingly, the company decided to develop its own manufactured sand products, combining granodiorite from the new Peppertree Quarry mixed with product from its adjacent limestone quarry.

In fact, 40 per cent of the output from Peppertree is manufactured sand – and it has proven to be a product of such outstanding characteristics that demand for it is growing.

Transport by rail

Bolton said another major challenge for Boral was getting its product to Australia’s largest city, almost 200km away. The quarry’s target output would have meant a steady stream of trucks travelling up and down the Hume Highway, and into an already very congested city road network.

“The need to ensure that all aggregates were railed from the site rather than truck presented a number of challenges to Boral and to Sandvik in developing the systems and infrastructure to accommodate such large volumes of diverse products by rail,” he said. “The rail loading infrastructure that was developed by Boral and Sandvik for this project, I believe, is one of a kind in this industry.

“It combines the ability to load multiple products, doing this at high capacity, similar to large scale mining operations.

“However, in large scale mining operations you are dealing with just a single product that’s going onto a train, whereas the system we have developed in conjunction with Sandvik allows us to deal with multiple products at very high rates, thus maximising our rail utilisation.”

To maximise the plant’s efficiency and productivity, minimise ongoing operating costs and ensure a high degreeof flexibility to meet changing market demands well into the future, Boral adapted the principles of “lean manufacturing” at its Peppertree operations.

The exterior of one of the crushing stations at Peppertree Quarry.

Boral project manager Kai Kane (left) with Sandvik Construction’s Glenn Cooper.

“The entire design of Peppertree incorporates a number of lean manufacturing initiatives to reduce material transport requirements and material movements, as well as excess stocks of materials on-site,” Bolton said. “Products from Peppertree and the way that these products were delivered to our markets drove us to design a plant based on what our customers truly valued.“From these customer requirements, the original project specification was developed, and Sandvik and Boral then designed and built the plant and equipment to meet those needs.”

Fully integrated plant

From the earliest specification and design stage, Boral worked closely with Sandvik Construction to develop a fully integrated processing plant that met the highest standards of production reliability, product quality and safety.

Once the raw quarried material leaves the pit, Sandvik-supplied conveyors, crushers, screens, air classifiers and surge bins, along with sophisticated control and quality monitoring systems, manage every aspect of production until the final product is loaded onto the train.

A key element of this process has been to ensure products out of Peppertree meet specifications, and achieve market acceptance.

According to Peppertree Quarry manager Angus Shedden, the quality of Peppertree products has exceeded all expectations.

“The feedback from our customers has been exceptional, far better than we expected,” he said. “Our secondary crushers, the Sandvik cone crushers, are really delivering fantastic shape.”

Shedden said this shape straight off the cone crushers was of such high quality the operation had been able to reduce the feed going through its quaternary vertical shaft impactor (VSI) crushers.

“We are also getting excellent consistency of our aggregate,” he said. “We are able to produce the same product consistently, first time, all the time. The biggest success here, from my point of view, has been the quality of the aggregates. The quality has just been exceptional.

“Since production out of Peppertree started, we have supplied a number of high profile infrastructure projects in Sydney – including Barangaroo – with customers very happy with the high quality aggregates that we are producing.”

Shedden is proud of the high degree of automation at Peppertree, and the benefits it has in terms of safety and efficiency.

“Because of the automation in the plant, not only can we operate the plant with one person, but it also means that we don’t have lots of vehicles, and we don’t have huge numbers of people on site,” he said.

“Our standard operating team per production shift is four people – and I defy anywhere else to have those sorts of numbers to produce the output we are achieving.

“For us, from an occupational health and safety (OHS) point of view, that has huge implications. A lot fewer people around and a lot fewer vehicles takes away a huge amount of risk. And, from an operational cost, we don’t have all that maintenance to carry out on mobile plant and equipment.

There are very few tipper trucks that visit the Peppertree Quarry site.

“As well, not having a lot of vehicles moving around the site really helps with our environmental controls.”

EHS solutions

Boral has taken the opportunity in developing a greenfield operation to introduce highly innovative environmental and OHS solutions, as Sharon Makin, stakeholder and environmental manager at Peppertree, explained.

“I had the privilege of actually starting here back when work on the site began in July 2011, and have stayed on to do health, safety and environment through operations,” Makin said.

An important element of the Peppertree site from the start was the “safety and design” concept.

“What that has meant in terms of operation is an OHS management system which ties in with all the physical, mechanical safeguards that we have put in place here,” Makin said.

“Some examples of what came out of this safety and design process is that everything is guarded – and all guarding is bright yellow in colour, so you can pick when something might be missing.

“There are no underground conveyors or underground tunnels; everything is above ground. Access is down the side of each conveyor and confined spaces, as much as possible, have been removed. Ladders have been almost eliminated from the operation, and wherever we can, access is by stairs.”

From an environmental point of view, Makin described the plant as “a dry process”.

“The site doesn’t have a water supply – apart from what falls out of the sky – so Boral and Sandvik also looked at what we needed to do in regard to environmental performance,” she said.

“So, for example, all conveyors are covered, all operations are within buildings, and we have minimal water usage to control dust.”

Because of the restricted water supply at Peppertree, Boral and Sandvik worked closely from the earliest stages of the design process to eliminate all haul trucks from the operation.

“Material comes out of the pit by conveyor, it goes through all the processing operations via conveyor,” Makin said.

“We are also the first quarry in Australia to put our product into silos, so we don’t have on-ground stockpiles that need to be watered and, again, we don’t need the trucks to haul them off-site.

A glimpse inside the main screening building.

High speed camera monitors ensure the product passing through the stations meets specifications.

“And as Peppertree has 100 per cent of its dispatch by rail, the silos feed the conveyor direct into the wagons, and so we minimise the need for water through that process as well.”

‘Extensive benchmarking’

One of the key people in helping Boral develop its vision of a highly automated, extremely safe site with the highest environmental standards has been Kai Kane, the project manager for Boral’s Sydney Aggregates Project, which covers the Peppertree Quarry, its adjacent limestone manufactured sand plant, rail infrastructure and the Maldon rail terminal that services the site.

“The criterion that we used in developing our concepts for Peppertree was extensive benchmarking of leading international sites,” Kane said. “We spent several months benchmarking various sites by Sandvik, in particular Perrier TP’s Mions Quarry in France, which became the reference point for this particular project.

“These reference plans were then used to consolidate our designs and use them for benchmarking to get world’s best practice in our design process, and then develop our safety and design requirements, as well as Australianising all those European designs.

“The safety and design process between the Boral and Sandvik teams was very iterative and collaborative. Our processes included extensive risk assessments, going through each of the existing designs and then through our new design to make sure that we captured the earnings from the ones that we benchmarked.

“The plant we now have is world standard in terms of safety and quality, and has produced an exceptionally ergonomic and maintainable operation.”

Kane highlighted Peppertree’s train loading system and its “reject stockpile” concept as particularly innovative solutions to significant challenges.

“Our train loader, which was a collaboration between Boral and Sandvik, has resulted in a world class rail loading system, which operates at 2000 tonnes per hour,” Kane said. “It is the most efficient loading system that Boral currently operates.

“It is unique in that it is capable of loading multiple products – in our case, multiple different products and recipes – something that is unique in the quarrying industry.”

The site’s reject stockpile system is what Kane calls an “elegant solution” to the challenge of dealing with out-of-spec products coming from the silos to the train loader.

Product comes out of the silos at 2000tph, and before going to the train loader goes through a sampling station, where a high speed camera monitors to ensure the product passing through the stations meets specifications.

“Any out-of-spec materials are picked up within five seconds as they go past the camera detection systems, then the chute changes direction and diverts the material to a radial stacker and our reject stockpile,” Kane said.

“These materials that come out of our radial stacker are then recirculated by a front-end loader, back into our screening and crushing plants for recovery.

Peppertree Quarry’s entire output leaves the site by train, with multiple product mixes in every trainload.

“Comparing it with the plants we benchmarked when designing and specifying Peppertree, this is now in a superior state to all of those, particularly from an automation perspective.”

David Bolton said customer acceptance of Boral’s product out of Peppertree, in both concrete and asphalt operations, was even better than the company had hoped. He reiterated the development of Peppertree as “a generational investment” for Boral.

“It’s been a once in a lifetime opportunity to be involved in something of this scale,” he said. “It’s also been a pleasure to work with a great team at Boral Peppertree and a great team at Sandvik.

“What these two teams have been able to achieve working together has really opened our eyes to opportunities for improving our existing operations, as well as learnings we can apply to future greenfield and brownfield developments.”

Source: Sandvik Construction

Newmont Mining has entered an agreement with PT Amman Mineral Internasional (PT AMI) to sell its interests in PT Newmont Nusa Tenggara (PTNNT), which operates Indonesia’s Batu Hijau copper and gold mine.

Newmont’s 48.5 per cent interest in PTNNT is valued at $1.3 billion; with the deal seeing $920 million paid at closing and $403 million in contingent payments.

Nusa Tenggara Mining Corporation is also selling their ownership stake to PT AMI.

The company’s president and CEO Gary Goldberg said, “Selling our stake in PTNNT for fair value is aligned with our strategic priorities to lower debt, fund our highest margin projects and create value for shareholders.”

The move is set to close following regulatory approvals in the third quarter. It is also subject to other conditions including government approval of the transfer and resolving all tax matters.

Newmont has generated $1.9 billion from the sale of non-core assets and since 2013 has decreased their debt by 37 per cent. In 2015, they acquired the Cripple Creek & Victor gold mine in the US, and added five million ounces of gold reserves.

Its projects in Australia, USA, and Suriname are set to add nearly one million ounces of profitable production over the next two years.

The sale follows BHP divesting its 75 per cent stake in Indonesia’s IndoMet Coal, exiting the country completely.

As the world moves to combat climate change, it’s increasingly doubtful that coal will continue to be a viable energy source, because of its high greenhouse gas emissions. But coal played a vital role in the Industrial Revolution and continues to fuel some of the world’s largest economies. This series looks at coal’s past, present and uncertain future, starting today with how it’s formed.

Love it or hate it, coal played a crucial role in launching us into the modern world by fuelling the Industrial Revolution. The byproducts of that role were, of course, the rise of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere and dangerous levels of air pollution in the big coal-fuelled cities.

But despite its insidious influence on the climate and our health, coal has a lesser-known positive side to its otherwise dark soul. It has provided us with some stunning fossils.

Geologists have known for centuries that coal is an accumulation of plant material that, once buried in the Earth’s sedimentary layers, gets compressed by gravity into a denser, compact form. Yet, in recent years, scientists have hotly debated the early phases of coal formation.

The discussion hinges on whether coal formed due to the absence of certain organisms that actively break down the woody tissues of dead trees, or whether other non-biological factors were the reason.

Contested origins

Coal starts its cycle of formation with the accumulation of plant material in swamps or bogs. Decaying plant matter that builds up at the bottom of bogs or swamps is called peat. After other sedimentary layers bury the peat deposit, the weight of these sediments builds up and compacts it.

Other chemical and physical processes also alter the peat, including pressures exerted by tectonic forces as continents move and crash into one another. These processes eventually turn the layers of compacted peat into rock we can mine.

Pure black coal, richer in organic carbon and tempered by heat and pressure, is called anthracite. Brown coal, or lignite, is mostly just compressed peat and has more sediment mixed in with plant matter.

Coal has formed as very large deposits at certain times in Earth’s prehistory. So much so that Reverend William Conybeare, the esteemed British geologist of the early 19th century, first named the Carboniferous or “carbon-bearing” period (359 million to 299 million years ago) after the distinctive coal deposits of Britain in his book of 1822.

These great coal swamps formed in what were the Earth’s first great forests. They were home to many varieties of giant amphibians and early reptiles and huge insects, as global oxygen levels were very high at this time.

For many years, scientists believed that coal formed in such large deposits at these times because certain fungi that helped break down the lignin, or woody tissues, had not yet evolved. The molecular clock estimates for the appearance of these fungi, called Agariomycetes, suggest they should appear in the Permian period (299 million to 252 million years ago), after the formation of the vast Carboniferous coal deposits.

A new theory

But this doesn’t account for the huge amounts of coal that formed in much later geological periods, such as the Cenozoic, over the past 65 million years. And a new study, led by Matthew Nelsen of Stanford University, takes issue with this model, as well as presenting a new hypothesis for coal formation.

The study authors argue that coal formed in the Carboniferous period consists dominantly of plants such as horsetails, or Lycophytes. These trees grew to enormous sizes and their periderm, or outer cuticles of the trunk, lack lignin, so wouldn’t be affected by the absence of lignin-degrading fungi. Their argument points to the biochemical composition of the plants having little to do with how coal accumulates.

The distribution of coal deposits through time is seen in the chart below of the estimated total volume of coal in North America. Large deposits of coal also accumulated during the age of dinosaurs (Mesozoic Era, from 252 million to 66 million years ago) and during the first half of the Cenozoic period (between 66 million and 30 million years ago), well after the predicted first appearance of lignin-degrading fungi.

The paper argues that tectonic factors are the most likely reason such big coal deposits built up at certain times. Large basins fill up with thick sedimentary piles when continents collide and mountain-building occurs. Some really excellent fossils have been found in such coal deposits, although the acidity of coal often dissolves bones.

The best-preserved fossils are those caught in the cleaner sediments laid down by streams between coal seams. Such fossils are routinely uncovered as part of coal mining. Several of the large fossil amphibians that lived in the Carboniferous swamps have been found this way.

A famous site at Nyrany in the Czech Republic was discovered because the director of the natural history museum there had coal delivered to heat his room. Splitting the coal sometimes yielded well-preserved fossils of early amphibians, so he could add scientifically significant specimens to his collections without leaving his office.

Perhaps the most famous fossils found in a coal mine were uncovered at Bernissart in Belgium. Many skeletons, representing 33 individuals of the large plant-eating dinosaur Iguanodon, were found there in 1878. These skeletons were among the first complete dinosaurs ever found.

Although coal is much maligned because of its byproducts from combustion, the factors responsible for coal accumulation also give us fossil treasures from the past. To stop coal mining would undoubtedly mean many good fossils remain in the ground. But the long-term health of our planet is a bigger priority.

This is the first article in our series on the past, present and future of coal. Look out for others in the coming days.

John will be online for an Author Q&A between 2:30 and 3:30pm AEST today (Wednesday 8 June, 2016). Post any questions you have in the comments below.

John Long, Strategic Professor in Palaeontology, Flinders University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Sandvik has created a new design for top centre drill bits.

According to the company they feature the largest upgrade to face drilling bits in decades.

Following field testing of the new bits, Sandvik recorded up to 80 per cent longer grinding intervals and up to 60 per cent long bit lives, which results in higher productivity due to longer service life, and a safer working environment due to fewer bit changes.

“The top priority when developing the new top centre rill bit was to increase service life,” Sandvik stated,” since the main reason for discarding a drill bit is excessive wear on the diameter, the simplest way to achieve longer service life is to add more gauge buttons.”

“However, this can prove problematic because of the minimal space available; furthermore an increase in the number or size of the carbide buttons generally decreases the penetration rate: the same impact force yields a lower net for per button.”

Sandvik believes it has now solved this problem with a ‘raised font’ elevating two or three front buttons – depending on the diameter size – by a few millimetres above the gauge buttons located on the periphery of the bit.

These front buttons are set at a slight angle relative to the symmetric axis of the bit, the raised front also creates a recessed hole bottom pattern that alters the rock breaking action to achieve improved performance.

In addition, the top centre bit also features a new cemented carbide grade, the GC80.

“The problem with carbides that exist on the market today is that they are either wear-resistant or tough,” Sandvik Mining top hammer tools product manager Robert Grandin said.

“When developing the GC80, we wanted to combine the best of those two worlds in order to get as much as possible out of the top centre design.

“The new bit design essentially delivers more drill metres per shift compared with a standard bit, thanks to fewer bit changes.”

The top centre drill bits are available in bit sizes 43, 45, 48 millimetres, with 2-3 raised end buttons and 7-8 gauge buttons in grade GC80 and connections R32, Sandvik Alpha 330, and R35.

Australia’s largest wire rope supplier WRI industries has been playing an ever-growing game since the 1920s, building a business from the BHP empire to become the largest supplier in the country, and thanks to a fortuitous buyout, the world.

Australia’s manufacturing industry cops a lot of bad press, and in focussing on stories about companies going bust due to managerial stagnation and waste, we forget about the success stories, the companies holding their own and continuing to press forward in productivity and innovation.

With the fall of Arrium last month, the mining industry would do well to acknowledge a business that arose from the BHP and the OneSteel empire, which will continue to thrive thanks to good management and sound investment: WRI Australia.

WRI Australia is the most successful wire rope business in the nation’s history. Dating back to its first rope produced for the mining industry in 1926, WRI has gone from strength to strength, streamlining operations to maximise efficiency over the past 90 years.

Until 12 months ago, WRI (Wire Rope Industries) was owned by the Arrium Group. The recent purchase by one of the world’s largest producers of wire and other related products, Belgian company Bekaert, may have saved the jobs of 100 Newcastle employees at the WRI factory.

At present, the chief claim to fame of the WRI business in Newcastle is the fact that it produces around 90 per cent of the wire rope used in the Australian mining industry. That’s ropes for draglines and shovels, ropes for cable-hauled conveyors, crane ropes and lifting gear, not to mention the structural ropes produced for engineering projects in other sectors.

A world-leader in the manufacture of drags, hoist ropes and pendants for draglines, as well as the shorter pendants for shovels, WRI’s is a story of successful management, of changing with the times in order to meet the needs of industry.

In its heyday as the Australian Wire Rope Works, a fully-owned subsidiary of BHP from 1933 onwards, the Newcastle factory produced many different wire rope products, and employed up to 450 workers at any one time.

Today the Newcastle factory, still with original art deco brick frontage, produces only 30 different products for the mining industry, and employs 100 people. Good management and top-class approach to safety made the company an attractive buy for a multi-national looking to take over the world’s wire rope business.

Baekart has all but monopolised the world’s manufacture of this important consumable, as late last year the Belgian manufacturer announced plans to merge with the largest wire rope manufacturer in the US, Bridon, to form a joint venture which will be named the Bridon Bekaert Ropes Group.

Meeting Australian needs.

With original BHP pedigree, WRI is primarily about mining supply, specialising in new-technology ropes that will last longer in the field.

Chief among the products manufactured in Newcastle are the plastic infused wire ropes, which were designed specifically for the mining market, to suffer the extremes of heavy use.

One of the key advantages of plastic infused rope is that it is impossible for dirt and rock chips to become embedded between the rope wires, where the intrusion can cause excessive wear and weaknesses in rope strands. The plastic coating serves as a barrier against contaminants and foreign bodies, which is especially important for shovel hoist ropes, which are exposed to contaminants in operation.

The other major benefit is that the impregnated plastic prevents the kind of wear that occurs within dynamic ropes, which are designed to be repeatedly put under load and strain, creating movement and wear between the wires. The impregnated plastic helps to retain the natural balance of the rope by locking strands in place to minimise the movement of component strands and wires during operation.

In addition, the plastic coating provides a smooth surface to pass over sheaves and drums, preventing nicking as well as wear to the sheaves, where a great deal of the outer wear on the rope occurs.

Each of these benefits adds up to a doubling of the expected operational life of each rope, which represents a significant saving when a single shovel pendant sells for around $20,000.

WRI also ensures additional levels of safety are built into the pendant sockets in a technique that ensures failure of the connection is impossible. By passing the rope into the socket, splaying out individual wires and filling the void with molten zinc, the safe working load of the connection is ensured to be greater than that of the rope.

WRI also specialises in long distance cable-haul conveyors, where resistance to corrosion is important to keep maintenance costs down, as is the number of splices in the rope made to achieve long distances.

According to WRI general manager Stuart Callender, Australia is home to one of the largest populations of overland conveyor systems, for materials handling from mines and loading facilities to ports.

“They take long continuous lengths of rope, so we took the opportunity to invest in machinery capable of achieving that. Those ropes are just under 10km long, and we make them in parcels of around 120 to 130 tonne.

Manufacturing the ropes in such long single lengths precludes the need to splice smaller ropes together, which would create unnecessary points of weakness in the rope.

With export markets in China, South America and South Africa to name a few, around 10-15 per cent of the total production from WRI in Newcastle goes overseas.

The success of WRI as Australia’s premier wire rope business is grounded in manufacturing experience dating from the 1920s, evolution and continual development of manufacturing techniques, and ongoing investment in technology, as well as service to the customer.

With the release of the latest Federal Budget there have been fewer changes than expected, with small business and middle income tax payers the big winners, but how will it affect the mining sector?

The outlook, broadly for the industry, isn’t overly favourable with mining investment expected to fall by 27.5 per cent in 2015-16 and 25.5 per cent in 2016-17, as the industry still reels from the downturn.

Mining itself has also dealt a major blow to budget estimates, being directly blamed for a shortfall in expectations.

“The largest contributor to the expected forecast error in 2015-16 is from the shortfall in company tax. In 2015-16, company tax is estimated to be $3.5 billion (5.1 per cent) lower than expected in the 2015-16 Budget. This is primarily driven by the fall in commodity prices in recent years, lowering profitability in the mining sector,” the budget papers stated.

Yet the government is pinning forecasts for the domestic economy using what may be inflated spot prices.

It has forecast a spot price of US$55 per tonne for iron ore, a rise from previous estimates of US$39 per tonne; US$91 per tonne for coking coal compared to US$73 per tonne in the last budget; and US$52 per tonne for thermal coal, which remains unchanged from previous budget estimates.

Despite this negative forecast – or because of it – the government is stepping in to build a new foundation for the next wave of mining.

The resources industry has been supported by the federal Government with one of the largest major national initiatives, a program designed to reinvigorate exploration.

The National Resources Development Strategy – Exploring for the Future, is a $100.5 million program designed to boost productivity and competiveness of the sector.

“The 2016-17 Budget delivers a strong boost to the productivity and competitiveness of this sector with $100 million provided to Geoscience Australia for mapping mineral, energy and groundwater potential in northern Australia and South Australia,” national minister for resources and energy Josh Frydenberg said.

According to the government, “The $100 million Exploring for the Future programme will produce pre-competitive geoscience data, to be released on an annual basis over the next four years. Geoscience Australia estimates that around 80 per cent of Australia remains under-explored, in particular, areas in the Northern Territory, Queensland, Western Australia, and South Australia, which will be the focus of this initiative. This will improve Australia’s long term exploration prospects and help address declining new onshore exploration.”

Frydenebrg added: “The benefits for doing so are clear. In 1996, Geoscience Australia undertook $3 million of analysis in the Browse Basin. This helped identify the Ichthys field, which will produce more than $70 billion in export earnings over the next forty years.”

“Further, data compiled across South Australia in the 1960s, costing around $350,000, helped identify the resource potential of the Olympic Dam and ultimately to the discovery of ore more than 300 metres underground.,” he said.

“At a challenging time for the resources sector, this important initiative will help ensure that Australia’s strength in innovation is furthered, and that we maintain our competitive edge in this world-leading sector.”

The initiative was welcomed by mining lobby groups.

The Minerals Council of Australia called it a “strong pro-growth budget”.

“It balances a careful approach to spending, the maintenance of a strict approach to tax integrity and lays out a medium term plan to promote investment and growth,” Minerals Council chief executive Brendan Pearson said.

“The minerals sector welcomes the Government’s commitment to a $100.5 million initiative over four years to produce mineral, petroleum and groundwater resource data in targeted areas in northern Australia and South Australia to help identify new greenfield exploration sites.

“This is a critical investment to identify the next sources of Australia’s minerals wealth. “

The Queensland Resources Council echoed the Minerals Council, stating “it is pleasing the Turnbull Government has an eye to high-tech jobs of the future in the resources sector”.

“Exploration is the R&D, or building blocks, for the resources sector, getting the sector ready for the inevitable future upswing,” QRC chief Michael Roche said.

However, greener mining initiatives have been scrapped in the new budget, with the Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund and the Coal Mining Technology Abatement Support Package closed, while the Carbon Capture and Storage Flagships funding has been reduced.