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Continental opens third SA mine, targets 2.8Mt/y RoM output
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By: Natalie Greve
1st February 2013
Updated 17 minutes ago
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JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Continental Coal has increased its combined targeted run-of-mine (RoM) rate to 2.8-million tons a year, following the start of production at its third South African thermal coal mine.

First production and export thermal coal sales from the 90%-complete Penumbra coal mine, in Mpumalanga, were realised late last year, with RoM production of 2 694 t achieved during the quarter ended December 31.

This pushed the company’s total thermal coal production from its Ferreira, Penumbra and Vlakvarkfontein operations to 468 469 t for the quarter.

RoM coal production at the Ferreira coal mine increased by 44% quarter-on-quarter to 152 280 t following the establishment of new opencast mining operations in the adjacent and adjoining prospecting rights.

However, production from Vlakvarkfontein fell 26% to 313 495 t for the period.

Further, total thermal coal sales for the quarter increased 10% quarter-on-quarter to 449 203 t.

Meanwhile, optimisation work on Continental’s proposed fourth mine development, De Wittekrans, demonstrated the opportunity to enhance the technical and financial fundamentals, with proposed exports of 2.4-million tons a year of thermal coal over an initial 30-year mine life.

“This work has demonstrated that De Wittekrans is a significant asset that has the potential to become the company’s flagship project,” the company said in a statement.

In addition, Continental continued to pursue exploration work at various tenements across Botswana.

The company expected sales of some 200 000 t of high-quality export thermal coal from the Penumbra coal mine at total free-on-board costs of R471/t and forecast to generate $17-million in revenue for the current financial year.

Total cash and cash equivalents as at the end of the quarter was around A$4-million.

Edited by: Creamer Media Reporter