The $8.9 million Springvale CPP upgrade contract will lift its throughput capacity from 300 tonnes per hour to 450tph.

The plant serves Centennial Coal’ Springvale and Angus Place longwall mines in New South Wales and is scheduled for completion in April.

Sedgman managing director Nick Jukes was “extremely pleased” and said it was the first major project win since Sedgman opened its Newcastle office in 2012.

Over to Queensland, Bandanna Energy has “revised” take-or-pay rail haulage arrangements with Pacific National for its Springsure Creek longwall project.

While the start of the up to 4 million tonne per annum services has been pushed back from July 2014 to January 2016, Bandanna said the changes allowed for smaller initial volumes to be railed to Wiggins Island before the 2016 start date – with first development coal forecast for mid-2015.

The duration of the rail contract was also boosted from 15 years to 20 years.

The changes come as Bandanna is canvassing interest from potential Springsure Creek joint venture partners with Korea Midlands Power recently inking a non-binding heads of agreement over acquiring a project stake.

International Coal is gearing up to transform its Consuelo acreage into a flagship project.

Within 10km east of Glencore Xstrata’s 8Mtpa Rolleston coal mine in Queensland’s Bowen Basin, an exploration target of 800-1700Mt of resources has already been set.

Notably, about 300-800Mt is targeted for open cut mineable depths of less than 250m.

Final costings for an exploration program are being worked out, with the project expected to be home to semi-soft coking coal.

The project area encompasses two licences, EPCs 2318 and 2332, plus two licence application areas with an independent rail line to Gladstone about 10-20km away.