At the company’s annual general meeting, managing director Hamish Bohannan said resource drilling at the project was underway while underground mining studies and contractor negotiations remained ongoing.

A development decision for the proposed mine is expected in the last quarter of 2011, with all necessary drilling and technical studies expected to be completed by the December quarter.

Bohannan said the mine would have an initial export capacity of 100-200,000 tonnes per annum and increase to 250,000tpa of predominately hard coking coal.

The company completed the acquisition of the Coalbrookdale assets from Brookdale Mining in the 2011 September quarter, which is part of a strategic tenement package at South Buller adjacent to the company’s Escarpment and Cascade blocks.

The South Buller region has a total resource of 52.8 Mt, while the Coalbrookdale tenement has an inferred resource of 5.7Mt and an indicated resource of 4Mt.

The company recently exported its first shipment of coal from the Buller project area via its Cascade open cut mine.

Bathurst said it aimed to ramp up to 2Mtpa from the South Buller areas during the 2012-13 financial year, and hit 4Mtpa in the 2014-15 financial year through mining in the North Buller areas of the project.