Tickets available for West Coast Forum 2021
Minerals West Coast’s 2021 forum has been set in for Thursday the 28th of October, and will be held in Reefton.
Minerals West Coast’s annual general meeting will also be held on the same day, prior to the forum starting.
The line up for the 2021 Forum: Resurgence, ticket prices, and registration details, can all be found on the forum page – click the button below to see for yourself.
Minerals West Coast and West Coast Commercial Goldminers’ Association amalgamation
With KFC and McDonald’s back operating, so are many businesses in New Zealand outside Auckland and Wellington.
The government recommends that staff within an organisation who can continue to work from home should do so.
For those who physically need to be at their work to do it, the following advice is given for working and running a business at alert level three:
- Everyone on site maintaining at least one metre of distance from one another at all times
- Visitors to worksites (customers, contractors etc) maintaining at least two metres of distance at all times
- Staggering break times between staff to reduce the number of people in one place at one time
- Providing hygiene and cleaning products so workers can disinfect shared surfaces (like the inside of a machine if it will be used by multiple operators) and wash and dry their hands
- Making sure a QR code or hard copy register is available for contact tracing
Mining at Covid-19 alert level 3
In mid-July a meeting was held in mid-July to confirm and progress the merger of Minerals West Coast and the West Coast Commercial Goldminers’ Association. All those in attendance from both organisations (which have many common members) supported the two groups becoming one, with the West Coast Commercial Goldminers’ Association amalgamating into Minerals West Coast.
In line with the constitution of the West Coast Commercial Goldminers’ Association constitution, another meeting will be held on between now and the annual general meeting of both groups in October when the merger will be finalised, subject to the approval of each respective groups’ membership.
Vaccination bookings on the West Coast
If you’ve been thinking about booking an appointment for your Covid-19 jab, but haven’t yet, you can either book online or over the phone.
The phone number is 0800 28 29 26, and operators are available to take your call any time from 8:00am to 8:00pm.
If the vaccination centre closest to you doesn’t have any vacancies any time soon, ask the operator whether there are any other centres nearby with vacancies at an earlier time – this may mean having to take more time out of your day, but it is an option.
Rumour has it, it takes only five minutes to book online if you don’t want to deal with waiting on the phone.
Minerals West Coast and New Zealand Petroleum and Minerals working together to address permit application backlog
Minerals West Coast met with New Zealand Petroleum and Minerals staff in mid-August to discuss time delays in the processing of applications for exploration and mining permits under the Crown Minerals Act.
In mid-August Minerals West Coast’s chairwoman, Glenys Perkins, and manager, Patrick Phelps, met with NZP&M staff in Wellington.
Minerals West Coast understands that in line with new protocols of not accepting applications if they are incomplete, about a third of permit applications are being rejected.
This is to ensure that those applications that lodged with the complete set of information required can get the full attention of staff, whereas incomplete applications need to be rewritten and resubmitted. If applications are rejected, application fees are refunded to the applicant.
Minerals West Coast intends to work with NZP&M to reestablish performance reporting, which was carried out on a quarterly basis throughout 2016 and 2017.
This involves NZP&M publishing permissions processing reports four times a year, outlining the number of applications received in a three month period, and the percentage of those applications processed within the target time frames, shown below.
| APPROVAL PROCESS | TARGET TIMELINE |
| Prospecting permits | 80 working days |
| Tier 1 exploration permits | 80 working days |
| Tier 2 exploration permits | 80 working days |
| Tier 1 mining permits | 120 working days |
| Tier 2 mining permits | 120 working days |
Subject to alert level restrictions, NZP&M will be speaking to these issues and other matters at the 2021 forum in October.
Minerals West Coast manager talks coal supply and demand with Bryan Crump
About the 10th of August the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change published its report labelled a “code red to humanity” and stressed all countries, big and small, rich and poor, need to drastically reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.
About the same time, in New Zealand, there were power cuts around the country on the coldest night of the year, with unprecedented demand for electricity. The next morning, the same energy and resources minister who wants 100% renewable electricity by 2030 wanted to know why 51% Crown-owned Genesis Energy hadn’t burnt more coal to keep the lights on.
All this and more was the focus of the latest conversation between Minerals West Coast’s manager, Patrick Phelps, and host of RNZ Nights, Bryan Crump. The full interview is available below.