JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Plant improvements at TSX-listed coal-miner Homeland Energy’s Kendal colliery, in South Africa’s Mpumalanga province, have allowed for a higher throughput, greater efficiency and a better yield, the group reported on Thursday.

The colliery’s processing plant had been shut down for ten days in April so that upgrades and improvements could be made to accommodate future production expansions.

More robust screens that eliminate the need for rescreening material were installed, while a mineral sizer was also added to the plant.

Subsequently, the plant is running at more than 20% better than the original plant capacity, while plant yields were above the 50% range, the company reported in a statement.

This improvement in yield was “significant” over that of the previous months and was expected to produce in excess of 60 000 t/m of saleable coal.

Further, Homeland was also planning further production expansions at the plant to increase the run-of-mine production to about 180 000 t/m in 2010, compared with the current 120 000 t/m.

Meanwhile, the company had opened a third box-cut at the opencast mine in January, allowing for three mining areas to the end of June, when the first boxcut would be closed.

The second phase of the mining plans at the colliery included opening up a fourth boxcut in the first quarter of 2010.

The company was currently selling about 50% of the coal from the mine contractually, while the remainder was sold on the spot market domestically or to the export market.

However, from the last quarter of this year, 50% would be sold contractually on the domestic market, while 25% would be sold contractually on the export market and the remainder of the coal on the spot market.

EXPLORATION PROGRAMME

Meanwhile, Homeland also reported that it was making progress with two of its high priority exploration projects in South Africa.

During the early part of this year, the company had completed a number of test drill holes at the Vlakvarkfontein project, situated near the Kendal colliery.

The tests indicated that the thermal coal was of a similar quality to that of the Kendal Colliery’s.

Further, the company was completing material for a submission of a mining licence application for its Onbekend exploration project. Drill results indicated that the target contained high-quality, low-phosphorous metallurgical coal.

The company expected to complete the compilation of data and information for the submission for a mining licence within the next quarter, it noted.

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