Coal news and updates

Australia’s Malabar awards Maxwell coal mine contract

Australian coal firm Malabar Resources has awarded the access mining contract for its Maxwell underground coking and thermal coal mine in the Hunter Valley region of New South Wales (NSW) to Australia-based Metarock subsidiary Pybar Mining Services.

Pybar expects to begin work on the access drifts to the Whynot coal seam in January-March next year and for the work to continue past the end of June. The first 3.5mn t/yr stage of the Maxwell underground mine will consist of board and pillar operations and a 145m wide longwall. Work will start on the second stage in late 2025 to expand the longwall to 300m and increase production to 5.5mn-6.5mn t/yr.

The Maxwell mine is on the site of the former Drayton thermal coal mine that Malabar bought from UK-South African mining firm Anglo American in February 2018. The Drayton coal mine closed in late 2016.

Anglo American had proposed developing Drayton South, which is now the Maxwell underground coal project, but was rejected twice by the NSW Independent Planning Commission in November 2015 and February 2017. Malabar received approval for the project in December 2020.

The Maxwell project will be a mine with 75pc coking coal and 25pc thermal coal, of 124mn t of saleable coal production or 148mn t of run of mine, according to Malabar's environmental approval application. But the local Upper Hunter Council questioned this assumption, highlighting the high ash content of the semi-soft coking coal. The initial coal from the Whynot seam is suitable for low-ash export thermal coal markets, according to the NSW government's Division of Resources and Geoscience.