Jan Britz has been named the company’s COO, reporting to chief executive officer Ian Benning and will be tasked with the responsibility of managing the day-to-day business of ZYL.

He has 22 years’ experience in the South African coal mining industry and was previously CEO of Sekoko Resource and Namane Energy.

Britz boasts a long list of coveted management experience, including the execution of mergers and joint ventures.

He also handled the Arnot colliery for Exxaro.

An additional appointment to the company is Adam Wilkinson, who has been named the project manager for the Kangwane project.

Wilkinson is a mining engineer with 15 years’ experience in the South African coal mining industry.

He spent six years with TWP Projects, where he was a senior mining consultant.

Wilkinson had a number of significant responsibilities during his time at TWP, including lead engineer at Continental Coal’s Penumbra colliery execution project and lead mining engineer and project manager for Anglo American thermal coal operations on the Dalyshope colliery concept.

Wilkinson is a member of the South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy.

Benning welcomed both Britz and Wilkinson to the ZYL team.

“The addition of Mr Britz and Mr Wilkinson to our operations team provides the board with the support necessary to advance the Mbila and Kangwane projects to production,” he said.

The appointments to the operations team will also allow Benning to engage with investors on a more regular basis.

ZYL’s Kangwane tenement is situated in South Africa’s Mpumalanga province and has an exploration target of 350-450 million tonnes and a JORC-compliant resource of 136.3Mt.

Saleable production from the mine is expected to reach 1.2 million tonnes per annum.