JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The Jan Karski coking coal project has cleared another hurdle with the Polish Agriculture Ministry approving the rezoning of 56 ha of agricultural land for industrial use, which will allow for the construction of a mine.

The approved spatial development plan is considered a “significant” milestone towards ASX- and Aim-listed Prairie Mining obtaining a mining concession for Jan Karski, and follows the recent approval of the project’s deposit development plan (DDP).

The spatial development plan and the DDP are two key components of the mining concession application, which also requires an environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA).

The ESIA has been substantially completed and Prairie said on Tuesday that it planned to make a formal submission for an environmental consent in the coming weeks.

The company would submit its full application for a mining concession for the semi-soft coking coal project in the coming months.

“Jan Karski is now one of the most advanced coking coal projects of significant scale in the Northern Hemisphere and its development will provide substantial economic and social benefits for Eastern Poland,” CEO Ben Stoikovich commented in a statement.

Prairie is developing the Jan Karski mine, in the Lublin province, in partnership with investors, including China Coal and CD Capital. 

China Coal will complete a Chinese bankable feasibility study for the mine next month. The study will support China Coal’s engineering, procurement and construction contract to construct the Jan Karski mine, and will underpin a Chinese bank financing package.

A March 2016 prefeasiblity study (PFS) confirmed the project’s potential to become a world-class mining operation. The PFS estimates that the Jan Karski mine will deliver 139.1-million tonnes of saleable coal over 24 years. The average run-of-mine production is estimated at 8-million tonnes a year, yielding 6.34-million tonnes a year, at steady state.