Gough mines $63m deal

Gough Group has secured its biggest machinery order and will deliver 43 pieces of Caterpillar equipment worth a total of $63 million to state-owned coal miner Solid Energy.

The group, long known as Gough Gough and Hamer, is the sole New Zealand agency for the yellow liveried Caterpillar.

The machinery order relates to Solid Energy's agreement with Downer EDi Mining to jointly operate the Stockton Opencast Mine in an alliance arrangement that started last October .

Gough chief executive Karl Smith said the first fleet order of Caterpillar equipment consisted of 27 trucks and seven excavators with the machinery ranging in weight from 35 to 100 tonnes.

The other Caterpillar units supplied to the alliance would include two track type tractors, two wheel loaders, two wheel dozers and graders.

These units would form the core of the new mining fleet operating at Stockton.

The tender was won after a previous contract run by Doug Hood Mining finished.

The alliance wanted a significant improvement in equipment productivity.

"We worked comprehensively from April 2009 all the way to that contract being awarded in October," Smith said.

"We've got a pretty good track record, but of course going through the global financial crisis we had to fight it out left, right and centre with some of our competition to win this."

There were two other fleet equipment tenders underway at Stockton with Gough involved in both of those, Smith said. "Those decisions will be made between April and June of this year, as far as we understand from the Solid Energy board.

"The second fleet would be worth in the magnitude of another $20 million, and then the third fleet [is] yet to be determined but there's quite a lot of civil equipment required as they start expansion on the plateau."

Around 100 Gough staff at Hornby would be involved in reassembling or commissioning the machinery units, which had been received in parts from five countries including the United States, Japan, Belgium and England. The assembly and delivery of the units would continue until June.

"Until they're commissioned and in the dirt up on the plateau we don't get paid," Smith said.

Ten staff would service the machines in Westport.

- © Fairfax NZ News