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“A lot of our clients are coming under increasing demand from
MACA has successfully trialled driverless trucks at Capricorn’s
investors to make changes/improvements in what we do and so
Karlawinda gold mine
a step-change needs to happen in how we operate on mines,
and it needs to be cost effective,” Sutton said.
“The main difficulty has always been the high capital investment,
especially on smaller mines without 20-year mine lives. We’ve
approached this from the point of view that it needs to be
agnostic, it needs to be low capital and it needs to be something
that we can take with us, transfer to other equipment, and move
around within our business. That’s what appealed to us about
this system.”
Having overcome the hurdle of developing a commercially viable
autonomous solution for its mining fleet, MACA is anticipating
plenty of interest from other clients and gold operators about
deploying the technology beyond Karlawinda. Clark said it was
a “tremendous advantage” to be in the first-mover position.
“The barrier for entry for adopting these technologies is Ltd, was equally critical in proving the autonomous technology
somewhat in the intellectual property of the actual integration could be viable.
partner, more so than the hardware bolted to the vehicle, and I
“If you’ve got that relationship and all parties are willing to
don’t think there’s any way of shortcutting that,” Clark said. commit some resources to prove out the concept, then you can
“What we learnt in the 18 months prior to the commencement do it,” he said. “That 20-year relationship allowed us to have
of this proof of concept and also during the last six months is these open discussions about how we can improve, how we
that our competitors are going to have to go through that same can make change, because the contract is always locked in
process and they’re going to have to do it with somebody else on a unit rate – cost per hour or cost per bcm. Trialling new
as well. Obviously at MACA, we want to be the integration technology is difficult if you don’t have that relationship.
partner throughout Australia for the SafeAI product.” “Continuous improvement is one of our key values, we’re always
Sutton added that having a long working relationship with the looking at how do we do things better, how do we improve. We
Capricorn management team, who were integral in the success call it continuous improvement, but it’s fundamentally how do
of other gold companies such as Equigold and Regis Resources we do better tomorrow than we did today.”

MACA Ltd is bracing for the short-term some short-term effects of COVID becoming more and more
impact of COVID-19 infections across prevalent in WA. But, we’ve seen COVID in Cambodia where
operations in Western Australia but we operate, we’ve seen it in Victoria where we operate and
expects to see a longer-term benefit reasonably quickly it seems to settle down into a business-
as-usual style and minimal impact.”
with the recent border opening to ease
pressure on labour shortages. The December half was also the first complete six-month
reporting period since MACA acquired the Mining West
business in February 2021. Sutton said the business was
he Perth-based contractor reported revenue of
now realising the full benefits of the $175 million purchase
T$841 million for the December half, up 80% on the
from Downer EDI Ltd.
corresponding six-month period in 2021, including organic
“It gave us access to some significant iron ore projects and
growth of 24%.
access to a significant fleet as well, which was generally
Earnings also increased across EBITDA (up 73% to $101
larger scale than we were doing,” he said.
million) and NPAT (up 77% to $21.1 million) despite earnings
“We’ve now got the full range from very large iron ore fleets
per share of 6.1c being just short of the 6.2c reported for
down to smaller gold fleets, so a very broad spectrum across
the full 2021 financial year. Shareholders received an interim
our business. We now have a balance which is about 40%
dividend of 2.5c.
iron ore and 40% gold, with a bit of lithium and nickel in there.
“Our margins were off slightly, but not as much as people
“We believe we got a fair number with the acquisition. There’s
were expecting in the market,” MACA managing director
Mike Sutton said. “COVID certainly had an impact, labour certainly been some scuttlebutt around consolidation [in the
contracting industry], but consolidation needs to be able
shortage had an impact, but was reasonably well managed
I think, and the impact was a lot less than people were to deliver value. It was certainly accretive for us to buy the
Mining West business and we always keep an eye out on
expecting.
what’s happening, but consolidation for its own sake doesn’t
“We’re certainly expecting to see some pressure easing on
add any value.”
the labour market this half, notwithstanding we might have
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