ROM coal feed to the plant from a 120,000 tonne stockpile commenced on August 1 and has been steadily increased to a rate of 550 tonnes per hour. The throughput rate will reach 750 tph after longwall mining resumes in late August.

Previous capacity of the washery before the upgrade was approximately 500tph.

The plant upgrade is an integral part of the Tahmoor North expansion strategy, which aims to double the production rate at Tahmoor by early 2004.

The new plant provides process advantages over the prior model including increased coal recovery and better coal quality control and reduced operating and maintenance costs by the replacement of older maintenance intensive circuits with a more modern screening facility and higher capacity heavy medium cyclone and froth flotation circuits.

The new washery will also reduce product handling costs through automation and remote automation of clean coal stockpile reclaiming facilities.

Since the upgrade Tahmoor have seen off two export shipments from Port Kembla.

The company has also reached an agreement with Kembla Coal and Coke to convert a $4.8 million deferred payment to a quarterly production royalty over a specified tonnage beginning April 1, 2004 and ending no later than June 30, 2006. The deferred payment resulted from the purchase of the Tahmoor mine in 1997.