Listed Mining Companies
ADD A COMMENT PRINT 
JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) - The South African subsidiary of London-listed coal-miner Bisichi Mining, Black Wattle Colliery, has been granted approval by the Department of Mineral Resources to mine all opencast reserves at the colliery.
The coal-miner told shareholders in a statement on Friday that a switch to opencast mining at the colliery, which is situated in Middelburg, in South Africa's Mpumalanga province, has allowed the miner to lower its production costs, increase its washing plant yields and to mine its reserves more flexibly.
The subsidiary, which had been in the process of closing the majority of its underground mines in favour of lower cost opencast mines throughout much of 2009, had first started opencast mining operations in April 2008.
Bisichi mining had noted in an interim management statement in November last year that it expected to see increased benefits from the Black Wattle opencast operations this year.
At the time, it reported that it had expanded its washing plant's capacity to 170 000 t/m, up from the previous 130 000 t/m.
It had also secured a three-year fixed-price coal supply contract with a Swiss-based commodity broker, for 900 000 t of export steam coal to be supplied evenly over three years, starting in January.
