Worth their weight in gold

Tonnes of value: the Elite Group are helping clients capitalise on the gold rush across WA

With gold prices surging across the globe, WA operators are looking to cash in on the opportunity.

Dormant stockpiles containing millions of dollars in gold value are now viable to process from a business perspective. Coupled with the increased focus on downtime reduction and miners are looking for one thing — partners who can reliably turn rocks into revenue, quickly and safely.

Elite Maintenance Solutions — now evolving into Elite Mining Civil and Crushing Services — have been doing exactly that. Managing Director Reece Bacon says they’ve never been so busy.

“My phone won’t stop ringing. I can’t put the thing down.”

Formed in 2020, Elite grew slowly in its first year, by design. In a highly competitive WA labour market, where people are often just considered numbers, Elite chose a different path — opting for a quality over quantity strategy and staff retention as the chief focus.

The philosophy is simple: if quality tradespeople are getting harder to find, you do everything possible to retain them when you get the chance.

This was backed by a genuine interest in mateship among the crews onsite delivering the work and a robust incentive program designed to reward commitment and retain the industry’s best personnel. The program includes:

$4000 referral bonuses
Annual all-expenses-paid North West fishing trips
Top salaries for the right candidates

Like anything, Bacon credits his team’s experience in the sector as the reason or success. In a game of fine margins, the smallest changes can result in the largest gains for the client.

“A 5% increase in the optimisation of a circuit can result in millions of dollars in profit for a client,” Bacon said.

Maximising efficiency ultimately comes down to picking the right gear and minimising downtime onsite. The team at Elite have built their reputation on exactly that. As the trusted maintenance partner for mobile crushing manufacturers such as Striker, 888CSE, Tutt Bryant and Lincom, the team understands what keeps production moving.

“One downtime incident can cost the company millions,” Bacon said.

Bacon says that level of reliability only comes from years around the machines and hard-won experience across multiple campaigns. At Elite, it’s the backbone of every successful crushing project.

Second page heading: No bulldust, much harder than you think.

Elite was recently engaged to supply a precise material for KCMG’s Super Pit — tasked with producing a tailings material with “absolutely no bulldust”.

Bacon says it was one of his team’s toughest challenges thus far.

“They basically wanted cracker dust with no dust in it. Three other crushing contractors had previously attempted to produce the material without success — it really was a tricky material to produce.

“As soon as we got the call, as challenging as it looked, we were confident we could get it done.”

Despite the complexity of the specification, Elite produced the material within tolerance and left the project with glowing feedback. Achieving such tight dust limits required a custom crushing arrangement tailored for the job. It’s one example among many specialised crushing campaigns successfully delivered by the crushing arm of Elite Group.

In the past 12 months alone, Elite’s crushing division has delivered projects across Perth, the Yilgarn and the Goldfields, including:

An ongoing 7-month gold ore crushing project in the Yilgarn
Concrete and sealing aggregates
Road base and coarse filter materials
Tailings dam construction materials

With an eye on continuing to expand into the mining and civil projects space, Bacon is now dedicating plenty of tendering power to push into lump-sum projects throughout the state.

Having recently progressed to the second stage of a major interstate BHP tender, Elite are planning to use the same philosophies that underly their success thus far.

“We’ve invested heavily in building an internal capability across estimating, planning and project delivery,” Bacon said.

“Expanding into more mining and civil work feels like a natural progression for us.”

Elite’s growth remains organic, creating opportunities for internal staff to step into roles they’re naturally suited to. By promoting from within and letting capability grow alongside the business, Elite plans to maintain the culture and philosophies that has underpinned its success so far.

Now actively open to mining and civil projects

With a growing fleet and extensive crushing experience, Elite are now expanding into mining and civil works — providing clients with a pit-to-port capability ideal for juniors who can’t invest in heavy upfront capex.

Capabilities include:

Mobile crushing contracts
Fixed plant crushing maintenance
Bulk earthworks
Load and haul campaigns
Drill and blast packages
Aggregates for roads and major projects
Specialised concrete aggregates
Tailings construction and lifts
HDPE welding and lining

The company operates with flexibility, urgency and a deep respect for long-term partnerships That mindset has created ongoing relationships across the Goldfields, Yilgarn, Pilbara and interstate.