In its recent quarterly, which revealed the mine’s construction was 87% complete by December 31, Whitehaven said the likely 6Mtpa rate by this time will follow commissioning of the full fleet of “ultra-class and ancillary mining equipment”.

“The number of employees will also gradually increase from 151 at the end of December as people are recruited to operate the additional mining equipment,” the Gunnedah Basin miner said.

“Orders have been placed for more mining equipment that will be used to increase production to an annualised rate of 8.5Mt [ROM].

“This equipment which includes a further Hitachi EX8000 excavator and seven Hitachi EH5000 trucks is expected to start arriving onsite at the end of Calendar 2015 and be operational from early CY2016.”

In mid-2014 Whitehaven received more than 1800 applications for 100 Maules Creek operational positions, and it did not reveal how many jobs were required to get to 6Mtpa .

However, it has said that a workforce of 450 people was needed for the full ramp up to capacity of 13Mtpa ROM (expected within three years).

Based on this rate of 28,889 tonnes per man per year, Whitehaven will need a workforce of around 207 to achieve 6Mtpa – meaning that an additional 56 positions could be on offer to meet these plans.

With nine trainloads of Maules Creek coal railed to Newcastle’s port so far, Whitehaven said the mine’s coal handling and processing plant is expected to be commissioned and ready to produce metallurgical coal products by July.

Total saleable coal production from the mine had reached 54,000t in the December quarter.

Other results

The Narrabri underground coal mine restarted production three days ahead of schedule on November 30 after a longwall change was completed faster than expected.

This planned downtime did contribute to an overall decline in Whitehaven’s December quarter output with the mines under its management producing a total of 2.2Mt ROM – 33% lower year-on-year.

Stockpiled coal at Narrabri lessened the impact on the sales front with 2.95Mt of total coal sales made by the mines under its management – a 7% fall year-on-year.

On the marketing front, Whitehaven received an average price of $US66.07 a tonne for its export thermal coal sales in the December quarter.

It found that the sharp fall in oil prices had limited impact on thermal coal pricing in recent months but still forecasted a slow recovery for the commodity.

“Whitehaven expects a stable to gradual increase in the price for its thermal coal qualities over the next year, although the challenging markets make forecasting difficult and prices for low quality thermal coal will likely remain under pressure subject to Chinese demand,” the company said.

“Whitehaven does not expect to sell any of its high quality coals to China in the next year.”

The road to a metallurgical coal recovery, including for pulverised coal injection coal prices, was still expected to be a long journey.

“Production cuts in the metallurgical coal market of about 25Mtpa announced during 2014 are working through the coal market as evidenced by the recent Q1 2015 quarterly price settlement of $US117/t for premium hard coking coal,” Whitehaven said.

“This price outcome was slightly lower than the $119/t agreed for the previous quarter. However lower grade coking coal saw slight price increases quarter on quarter and PCI was unchanged, which is indicative of a metallurgical coal market close to balance.”