Name: Matla mine.

Location: The mine is located in the Kriel district of Mpumalanga, South Africa.

Controlling Company: Exxaro Resources.

Brief Description: Matla is an underground operation with three mines – Mine 1, Mine 2 and Mine 3 – all of which supply coal directly to South Africa’s State-owned power utility Eskom’s Matla power station by conveyor belt.
The principal economic seams exploited are Seam 2 and Seam 4L, with the mining of Seam 5 terminated in 1998, owing to high levels of contamination and the subsequent increase in abrasivity.

At the current extraction rate, Matla is projected to be in production until at least 2033. Although the mining right is due to lapse in 2025, Exxaro has a reasonable expectation that the renewal of the mining right will be approved.

Brief History: Construction of Matla began in 1976 and the mine came into full production in 1983, supplying all its bulk production to the Matla power station.

Products: Thermal coal.
Geology/Mineralisation: Matla is in the Highveld coalfield, south of the Witbank coalfield. The coalfield hosts up to five coal seams contained within the middle Ecca group sediments of the Karoo supergroup.

The stratigraphic sequence in the mine area includes five coal seams that can be correlated with seams found in the Witbank coalfield.

Coal seams in the area are generally flat and continuous, with subsequent igneous activity resulting in displacements and devolatisation of coal seams at places.

Reserves: Proven and probable reserves as at December 31, 2015, were estimated at 257-million tonnes run-of-mine coal.
Resources: Mineral resources as at December 31, 2015, were estimated at 1.012-billion tonnes of raw coal.
Mining Method: It is a fully mechanised underground mine employing continuous mining and shortwall methods.

Major Infrastructure and Equipment: The mining infra- structure includes three vertical shafts. Coal from the mines is transferred from underground conveyors onto surface conveyors, which feed the silos. The mine has adequate in-mine bunker storage to cope with surges in production volume. Coal is transferred from the silos through line conveyors to feed the screening plant. Between the plant and the power station is a short overland twin conveyor. At the power station, coal is stored in two staithes. Any overflow is transferred to the Eskom ground stockpile, located between the plant and the power station, and reclaimed when necessary.

Prospects: Two feasibility studies were completed in 2015, the north-west access project and the shortwall replacement project. The objective of these projects is to establish access to future reserves that are at a suboptimal distance from current infrastructure.

The north-west access project entails establishing an incline and decline to access reserves above and below current workings.

The shortwall replacement project entails bringing in addi- tional continuous miner sections to compensate for the shortfall in production when the shortwall ground is finally depleted. All projects form part of the exploitation strategy as per Matla’s life-of-mine plan.

Contact Person: Business unit manager Stephen Badenhorst.
Contact Details:
Exxaro Resources,
tel +27 17 616 2111,
fax+27 17 616 2205, and
website http://www.exxaro.com.