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Located near Wollongong in New South Wales, Bellambi West, now called Bellpac No. 1 Colliery, is Australia’s oldest coal mine. Resource Pacific hope to access reserves of 40 million tonnes in the Western area of the mine through a sub-lease infrastructure at the former Cordeaux mine.
Negotiations started last month and Resource Pacific hope to reach an agreement in the next two months.
If granted access, Resource Pacific will extract coal with a bord and pillar operation before longwall extraction is assessed at a later stage.
Resource Pacific managing director Paul Jury said an agreement would enable the company to develop a Greenfield site on a previously inaccessible area of the Bellpac lease.
“Potentially, this could be a very positive move which would generate significant employment and further underpin the future of the coal mining industry in the Illawarra,” said Jury.
Under it original mine plan, Bellpac was confined to reserves of 7.9 million tonnes. However a sub-lease agreement with BHP Billiton would see a major expansion to mine life.
Access from Cordeaux would make coal extraction from Bellpac far more economical. Although Jury was unable to reveal actual figures, he said the cost of access and removing the coal from the mine would be dramatically reduced.
Currently an old 17 kilometre underground corridor exists. If access is given go-ahead, Jury said an upgraded conveyor system would be installed.
“The mine would re-focus from being a short term operation to one with a 20 plus years of operations. We plan to grow the output from 700,000 tonnes a year to around 1.4 million tonnes, with longwall operations anticipated at a later stage,” he said.
The present workforce of 40 would increase to between 60 and 70 employees.
It is planned the mine would supply unwashed coal to BHP for processing at the dendrobium wahsery.
BHP Billiton Illawarra Coal president Colin Bloomfield said there was potential synergies between the two companies which would result in the best possible use of the region’s coal resources.
