“With the limited resources of the business and taking into account the current market conditions, the commercial terms of the transaction between ZYL and York, as well as York and Manzolwandle, are no longer market related or value-enhancing for the group,” Zyl said Friday.

The Australian-listed, South Africa-focused anthracite producer announced in May that it was reviewing its portfolio following a “particularly volatile and difficult time for the company”

“In the past, the company has been dedicated to the building of an exploration company focused almost exclusively on portfolio resource aggregation and feasibility studies targeted at niched metallurgical coal, namely anthracites,” Zyl’s chairman Yuzheng Xie said in May.

“While the product focus will remain, this past strategy will now move to one of becoming an operational mining company with a strong bias towards execution.”

Zyl said it would continue to engage with Manzolwandle directly to ascertain if the Kangwane North Project was commercially viable and would update the market when further developments took place.

The project contains an exploration target of 50-70 tons and is approximately 30km north of Zyl’s Kangwane Central project, in the same Nkomati coalfield.