Northparkes Mine  
 
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Northparkes is a copper and gold mine located 27 kilometres north-west of Parkes in the Central West of New South Wales, Australia. Northparkes is a joint venture between Rio Tinto (80%) and the Sumitomo Group (20%).

The majority of our employees and their families live in Parkes Shire, a diverse municipality centred in the town of Parkes, a thriving country town of about 12,000 residents. Parkes’ primary industry is agriculture but growth over recent decades from industrial, transport and mining sectors now means there is a diverse economic base in the town.
 
Northparkes operates both underground block cave mines and open-cut mines on its mining leases. Northparkes was the first in the country to use a variation of the cost-effective block cave mining technique in its underground operations. Underground block cave operations include the E26 Lift 2 and Lift 2 North (Lift 2N) block caves as well as the E48 block cave project. Opencut mining campaigns have been undertaken in the E22 and E27 pits.

Northparkes’ ore is processed on-site to produce a high-grade copper concentrate which is then transported by road train to the Goonumbla rail siding approximately 13 kilometres from the mine. The concentrate is then railed to Port Kembla, south of Wollongong, where it is then shipped to customers in Japan, China and India.

Northparkes Mines owns 6,000 hectares of land around the mine, of which the mining lease covers 1,630 hectares. The remaining land is actively farmed using best practice farming methods developed and adopted to maximise productivity and quality while conserving water and soils.


 
 
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