PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Junior coal developer Bathurst Resources has started preliminary activities at its Escarpment mine, in New Zealand, clearing areas for coal storage and site infrastructure, as well as conducting initial earthworks for the installation of the water management system.
Over the coming months, the company would carry out further site works at Escarpment, but would defer full project development until coking coal prices improved, the miner said.
Coal recovered during the construction phase would be sold into existing contracts.
“Our initial activities at Escarpment will be low key during this first phase of development. The intention is to prepare the site to a point where we can quickly ramp up to steady state mining when the price of export coking coal recovers,” said MD Hamish Bohannan.
The Escarpment project was expected to produce some 500 000 t/y by 2015, ramping up to 1.5-million tonnes a year.