“A small team of men is now engaged full time on the site,” Bathurst said, adding that fences and signage had been put up and other activities included clearing coal storage areas and developing infrastructure.

The company said further preliminary site works would be carried out over the coming months but full development would not take place until coking coal prices improved.

“Our initial activities at Escarpment will be low key during this first phase of development,” Bathurst managing director Hamish Bohannan said.

“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.”

Bathurst also said the coal recovered during this construction phase will be sold into existing contracts.

The company also has small, domestic market-serving coal mines.

Bathurst made 29 jobs redundant when it shelved the Escarpment project in February.

The project has a target of 500,000 tonnes per annum of premium coking coal with a ramp up option to 1 million tonnes per annum.