As China searches for new suppliers, major steel-producing countries with a shortage of domestic coking coal, such as India, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and the EU, are increasingly turning to Australia. This created a favorable situation for Australia related to the recognition of new markets.

A recent Queensland Resource Council (QRC) report highlights the skilled labor shortage as a handbrake to mining development in Australia’s COVID-19 era.

Describing the situation as “the perfect storm of labor shortages in a time of continued growth,” CEO Ian McFarlane pointed to the government’s forecast that Queensland coal exports will increase 23 percent by 2025.

Supply-side issues in Australia include a shortage of skilled procurement workers, which industry groups say has worsened in recent months due to the epidemiological situation.

Finding and retaining skilled workers has become a priority in QRC’s latest CEO sentiment survey as the number of employees in the mining sector has risen to 85,000, it is an increase of two-thirds over five years.

This increase in human resource employment, which has increased since COVID, is about six times the relative increase observed by the rest of Queensland’s workforce over the same five-year period.

QRC plans to expand its Queensland Minerals and Energy Academy to 100 schools by 2023, with the aim of encouraging students to work in mining and related careers.

The situation looks the same in the USA, where coal companies in the post-covid situation are not able to regenerate mining staff. As an incentive, some companies decided to increase salariesof  miners by 10-12%. The higher prices of natural gas have pushed U.S. Energy sector to move away from gas and burn 23% more coal this year. Therefore, there is a great demand for people willing to work in the mine.

 



Author: Małgorzata Wojtaszek-Kalaitzidi
Department of Cokemaking Technologies
mwojtaszek@itpe.pl  |  tel: 4832 621 63 58