London-listed Contango Holdings is on track to start producing coking coal from the Lubu project, in Zimbabwe, by the end of the first quarter.

The company has reported more deliveries of equipment on site, including a wash plant, which will be assembled and commissioned within the next few weeks.

Once calibrated and operating efficiently, the wash plant will produce 20 000 t of washed coking coal a month.

Contango also expects to take delivery of a surface mining machine, a Wirtgen 2200SM, in the coming days. The machine is suitable for selective mining and can mine up to 500 t/h.

The last piece of capital equipment due, a laboratory, will arrive on site later this month.