Chinese parent company Yanzhou Coal Mining provided the figures, but did not break them up to evaluate the individual performances from the Moolarben, Minerva and Yarrabee open cut operations, or its Austar and Ashton longwalls.

Courtesy of Yanzhou’s acquisition of Felix Resources, which was officially completed in January, the recent quarterly ROM result was 593% stronger year-on-year. The Austar mine chipped in 560,000 tonnes in the corresponding period of 2009.

Total saleable coal production from Yancoal’s mines reached 2.89Mt.

The first shipment of open cut coal from Moolarben was made in May and ILN conservatively estimates that its September quarterly production was more than 1.5Mt ROM.

Last year Felix anticipated the mine would produce 6Mt of thermal coal for 2010.

The mine will develop a longwall operation under the approved stage one development once it has sufficient port capacity at Newcastle.

Full ramp-up under stage one development will see Moolarben produce up to 13Mt per annum of product coal for export and domestic markets, with 8.8Mtpa from open cut mining and 4-4.2Mtpa from longwall mining.

Under stage two plans, which are yet to be approved by the NSW government, Yancoal is aiming for 17Mtpa ROM production, with 8Mtpa from longwall mining and the rest from four open cuts.