$20-a-day childcare and new airline hoped to bring more women to Mineral Resources’ 8000-plus workforce

Chris Ellison says Mineral Resources will start its own airline and set up a $20-a-day childcare centre at its head office in a bid to recruit women for the miner’s workforce.

The colourful mining chief executive told a packed Macquarie Australia Conference room in Sydney on Wednesday that it was a “daily chore” to keep a strong dynamic culture running through the multi-commodity business, which is preparing to ship its first ore from its newest iron ore mine at Onslow.

MinRes employs more than 8000 people and is on a major recruitment drive to bump that up to 10,000 by the end of the year.

The miner is known for its plush Osborne Park hub and has also been building resort-style accommodation to attract couples to the fly-in, fly-out life and create what he hoped would be a “safer work environment” for women.

The conference heard a new daycare centre would also be among the ploys to win over the stretched labour pool in WA, and that the miner was also looking at starting its own airline to get workers to and from site.

“In our head office we serve over 1000 (5-star) lunches a day, we’ve got a gym with 1500 membership,” he said.

“And I’m building a daycare centre so, ladies, if you want to come and work for me, 20 bucks a day for your kids, we’re going to be able to accommodate about 140 kids, so all our workforce.

“And we’ve started our own flights, so we’re starting our own airline. I’m not allowed to say that ... but we are. We’ve started ... coming out of Brisbane the last couple of months and we’re the only mining company who come direct from Brisbane into two of our sites at the moment.”

He said he was hoping to get the Onslow iron workforce to “about 40 per cent female” — a target he suggested was tracking well, with “people lined up around the block” to work on the project.

Onslow is due to ship the first ore in June and will deliver about 35 million tonnes a year at full capacity.

Outside of iron ore, Mr Ellison cast bullish predictions on the lithium spot price, estimating it could get up to $US1500 a tonne by the end of the year and up to $US2500 from 2026 to 2027.

“Everyone is a bit concerned about the lithium price,” he said.

“I started in lithium back in 2010. Back in those days, we were at about $US250 a tonne. Eventually around 2018 it started to migrate up towards about $US450 a tonne, and we built our mines around those sorts of numbers.

“Today’s prices aren’t as bad as what everyone thinks. I mean, they’re bad if you go out there and you build them in a low cost environment.”

MinRes runs three lithium mines — Mt Marion, Wodgina and Bald Hill.