Chinese miner Yancoal is progressing work on the development of a 6 million tonnes/year underground operation at its Mount Thorley Warkworth open cut coal mine.
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Confirmation of the exploration drilling for underground mine at MTW came in last week’s quarterly report –December 2018 by Yancoal’s chief executive officer Reinhold Schmidt.
“Importantly, we are making positive progress regarding the potential development of a proposed 6 million tonnes per annum underground mine at Mount Thorley Warkworth, with exploration drilling for the prefeasibility on the target seams completed at the end of 2018,” he said.
Yancoal have underground operations at the nearby Ashton mine at Camberwell and Austar at Cessnock.
The company is currently considering several options, which may include the highwall as an option, but no decisions have been made at this time.
In an upbeat report Yancoal achieved a record 50 million tonnes of saleable coal production in 2018 up 59 per cent on the previous year.
This included 41.9million tonnes from MTW and their jointly managed venture with Glencore – Hunter Valley Operations.
MrSchmidt, said, “Consistently strong production at each of our tier-one operations has again driven an exceptional end of year result for the Yancoal Group.
“We have achieved new milestones and set annual production and railing records at the Moolarben complex, maximising production from the underground and open cut mines to achieve ambitious targets and meet increasing customer demand for higher quality thermal coal.
“We have also benefited from a full quarter’s impact of new fleet maintenance practices at Mount Thorley Warkworth, successfully reducing truck down-times and interruptions to extraction and haulage rates, while simultaneously delivering significant operational cost savings.
“Similar maintenance reviews are ongoing across Yancoal’s other open cut mines, including the tier-one joint venture Hunter Valley Operations mine, as the business continues to establish new operating protocols and efficiencies to drive further production gains.
“In the year ahead, Yancoal will continue to ramp up exploratory works across its tier-one assets, to evaluate new opportunities to meet strong thermal and metallurgical coal customer demand.
“Our continued operational high performance builds on Yancoal’s game-changing achievements of 2018, including our recent dual-listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and associated Hong Kong Public Offering, Over-allotment Option and Australian Entitlement Offer, the prepayment of US$900 million in debt so far, and the payment of the Company’s first dividend to shareholders.”