Citing various sources, The Australian reported that Gloucester could announce this transaction and a potential capital raising as early as today.

Such moves would follow the appointment of Donaldson chief executive Brendan McPherson to replace Barry Tudor as the head of Gloucester more than two months ago.

At the same time, Noble Group global head of mining Tim Crossley was appointed deputy CEO of Gloucester and ex-BHP Queensland Coal operations manager Rick Gazzard landed the role of special advisor to the board.

Commodities trader Noble finished snapping up the entire equity of Donaldson in the 2010 March quarter and owns 65% of Gloucester.

The Hong Kong-based company acquired an 87.7% stake in Gloucester through a cash takeover offer back in June 2009, but Gloucester equity raisings had since watered down Noble’s stakeholding.

Back in February, Gloucester exercised its option to gain another 20% of the Macarthur Coal-led Middlemount project in Queensland’s Bowen Basin, taking it to 47.4%.

Gloucester’s stake of the project came from yet another deal with Noble last year.

Gloucester will also gain an additional 2.48% of the project from Macarthur once a shipping milestone is reached, which will lift its Middlemount stake to 50%.

Second-stage development of the mine is expected to start up mid-year and aims to lift output to 5.4 million tonnes per annum run-of-mine for the next 19 years.

Located 6 kilometres from the Middlemount town, the mine will produce coking and pulverised coal injection coal.

Gloucester’s Stratford and Duralie open cut mines are based in the Gloucester Basin of New South Wales and produce semi-hard coking and thermal coal.

Donaldson operates its namesake open cut mine in the Hunter Valley along with two bord and pillar underground coal mines, all within 26km of the Port of Newcastle.

Gloucester shares closed at $9.90 on Friday.