Company profile: New Gold Inc.
Headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, New Gold Inc. is an intermediate gold mining company with a focus on environment and social responsibility. The company has a growing portfolio consisting of four producing assets — the New Afton Mine in Canada, the Mesquite Mine in the United States, the Peak Mines in Australia and the Cerro San Pedro Mine in Mexico — and three development projects in Canada and Chile.
Peak Gold Mines has inspired the Canadian miner to do more with less, which includes integrating new systems to optimise overall production and performance.
Under this formula, Peak Mines has turned strategy into action by harnessing the creativity and passion of its team while introducing business processes that are lean and continuously improved. The Peak Mines in Australia has been a shining example of the success that incurs from these processes being put into place.
Maximising opportunities
Located in the Cobar Gold Field of New South Wales, Peak Mines is a medium-sized gold and copper mining operation, comprised of five commercially active underground mines and a copper-gold processing plant. The mine produces gold dore for sale at the Perth mint and copper concentrate that is sold to markets in Asia.
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Although New Gold has historically been focused on copper and gold, there is potential to maximize new opportunities at Peak Mines, according to managing director of Peak Mines, Greg Bowkett.
“We have a couple ore bodies with lead zinc that affect the current concentrate and we have to pay penalties because of this. So one of the things we are exploring is whether we could potentially reconfigure the circuit to produce a saleable lead or zinc product to turn this from a cost to a benefit.”
Though it is early in the evaluation phase this could enable the mine to access new parts of different ore bodies, which aligns with its strategy of maximising opportunities.
“Should this prove viable, this would add to our current operations and would give us the opportunity to maximise the whole asset instead of just the parts of it we are currently focused on,” Bowkett added.
Refining management and culture
For Peak Mines, structured communication has been instrumental in changing the company’s management style.
The mine has enlisted the help of Quest Worldwide, a global change management consultancy that works with organisations to improve their business performance. The partnership focuses on three fundamental areas: operational excellence, strategy execution and people management.
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