On Thursday the company confirmed a “small number” of redundancies following a restructure process at the Boggabri Road washery. 

Whitehaven could not confirm how many people will be affected, but said the aim is to reduce costs and make the whole plant more efficient. 

“In this current environment, it’s tough in the coal mining business. There’s not a lot of profitability,” Whitehaven’s Investor Relations Manager Ian McAleese said. 

“We need to continually look at these sorts of things across all operations.”

The company said there is a voluntary redundancy process in place and some staff have been offered redeployment to other sites – potentially replacing casuals. 

“There’s been quite a long consultation process through this whole thing and generally most people are reasonably comfortable with the outcome,” Mr McAleese said. 

The job changes will come into effect later this month with discussions with individual staff members still continuing.