PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Junior coal explorer Continental Coal would start coal sales from its Vlakvarkfontein mine, in South Africa, in the second quarter of this year, the ASX-listed company reported on Friday.

The recently appointed mining contractor Trollope Mining Services (TMS) has initiated community recruitment, and has hosted a number of site visits by potential offtake and equity partners, as well as likely service providers.

The company has also started with top soil stripping ahead of mining, which would start next month.

“The progress to date will ensure that we are able to start coal production and sales at Vlakvarkfontein during the second quarter of this year,” said Continental Coal MD Bruce Buthelezi.

As part of these top soil stripping activities in the boxcut area, TMS would remove up to 10 000 m³ by early March. By this time, a two-shift operation would start, with another excavator and three more dump trucks already on site, allowing the contractor to further increase prestripping activities to over 6 000 m³/d of material.

The first blasting operations would start within three weeks time.

Coal mining from the four-seam would start in the second quarter, and monthly sales of produced coal, which was expected to be around 100 000 t of mostly a predominantly domestic-quality thermal coal, was scheduled to start in May, before ramping up to full production by August.

The mine would eventually produce one-million tons of domestic-quality thermal coal and 350 000 t of export-quality thermal coal, once it reached capacity.

Offtake sales agreements, for the domestic and export coal product, were currently being finalised with South African power utility Eskom and a number of international coal trading houses respectively.