Universal Coal’s New Clydesdale Colliery (NCC) officially commenced production last week, re-positioning the company into a multi-mine coal producer in the domestic and export thermal coal market.
Image credit: Universal Coal ASX release
The NCC is located in South Africa’s premier coal region in the Witbank basin and hosts a JORC 2012 Mineral Resources of 130.4 million tonnes, enough to allow for over twenty years of operations.
According to Universal Coal, first production of Run-of-Mine (ROM) occurred on 8 September from the Diepspruit underground area at NCC, with the first continuous miner section coming on stream.
“Anticipated production from the NCC phase 1 operation is 900,000 tonnes per annum (tpa) ROM of export quality thermal coal destined for export markets. Ramp up to full capacity is expected before the end of December 2016,” the company told the ASX.
“Phase 2 development at NCC continues to advance in line with long-term offtake discussions. This phase will be an open pit development at the adjacent Roodekop project, delivering up to a further 2 million tpa ROM of premium quality domestic thermal coal or export quality thermal coal.”
The company, which appointed mining contractors STA Coal Mining to perform underground mining at the mine, said agreements with potential offtake partners for phase 1 product are being finalised with first coal sales anticipated later this month.
In addition, Universal Coal announced that Ingwenya Mineral Processing remains on track to commission the processing facilities by mid-September, having been appointed in August 2016 to refurbish the Coal Handling and Processing Plant.
