The shockwave of the nickel industry collapse is reverberating through W-A mining communities and beyond. BHP's nickel smelter in Kalgoorlie was opened by then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1973 and has stayed open through booms and busts but workers are now being laid off. And that's having a potentially devastating effect on the Goldfields city.
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00:00At the end of a long career, Graham Davis is reluctantly hanging up his high-vis.
00:10The 65-year-old smelter worker has taken a voluntary redundancy.
00:14They'll be very handy for when I'm going fishing I reckon.
00:18Mr Davis has worked at Kalgoorlie Smelter for 30 of the 51 years it's been in operation.
00:25There's other guys who have been there 44, 45 years and they're the fellas who put their
00:31lifeblood into the smelter.
00:34About 380 people are employed at the smelter by Nickel West.
00:39The shutdown was announced by BHP in July, with WA's once booming nickel industry now
00:44on its knees.
00:45We'll just ride this one out and business as usual, yeah I think 99% of the guys who
00:52worked out there were as stunned as I was.
00:5630 workers will stay on during care and maintenance.
00:59The rest will either be redeployed or made redundant.
01:03It's a massive blow to lose anyone really but obviously not their choice too.
01:07The job losses have flowed onto family members working in other sectors.
01:11We lost a doctor as well as a minor so it does have a lot of impact on the community.
01:18There are fears it could result in an exodus of workers from Kalgoorlie.
01:23We're in the last week of production at the smelter.
01:25We're absolutely supporting our people through this transition.
01:29BHP says it will reassess a potential restart of Nickel West in 2027.
01:35Is this just the start of the end?
01:37We'd like to think it isn't.
01:38In terms of the future we're preserving options and we're spending $450 million per annum
01:43to do that.
01:44It is a very cyclical commodity and we are confident we know its place in the critical
01:49minerals world.
01:50I'm hoping like most people that they do stick to their word and they reopen again.
01:57Tough times for critical minerals.