Last month, the former Southland mine shipped its first coal in two years after being devastated by a mine fire which broke out on Christmas Eve, 2003.

The mine was bought last year by Chinese major Yanzhou Coal Mining Company, a group which successfully uses LTCC mining methods in China to produce up to 10 million tonnes from some mines.

Roadway development mining to prepare for longwall installation began in June last year and is on schedule for the first longwall block to be available by the end of May.

Meanwhile, compatibility trials of the DBT-manufactured equipment are currently underway in Germany, with the bulk of the gear expected to be put on sea transport within the next few weeks.

A mini-build will be undertaken at DBT’s Hexham facility in June with the equipment to be delivered to the mine in July.

The first panel is in the Bellbird South part of the lease, near the site of the fire, and will be 151m wide and around 1570m long.

The LTCC gear incorporates a conventional longwall shearer mining at a height of about 2.9m to 3m. The shields incorporate a retractable flipper that caves at the rear allowing roof coal to come in behind the shields which is collected by a second chain conveyor located behind the shields.

Up to an additional 2.5m of the seam will be recovered through caving onto the rear AFC, which will be controlled by the rear canopies on the shields.

Austar's senior site executive Greg Duncan said the mine now had 250 employees in preparation for the restart of full-scale mining.

Duncan said the conveyor has been upgraded to accommodate a mine capacity of up to 3Mt ROM coal and further upgrades during the five year plan will increase this to over 3Mtpa.