Austar’s ROM coal production was 0.7 million tonnes for six months to June 2015, with saleable coal production of 0.5Mt.

Minimal development production activity and continued geological difficulties at the longwall mains detrimentally affected consistent production output for the majority of the reporting period, the company said.

“Life of mine plans for Austar continued to be redeveloped and underground crews redeployed to other NSW operations where possible throughout the reporting period, in response to the limited opportunity for consistent development activity resulting from the ongoing investigation in the underground incident of April 2014 in the former main development areas,” the company said.

In July Yancoal revealed that Austar’s pioneering use of longwall top coal caving technology is over as it officially becomes a continuous miner operation amid the company’s move to make up to 55 redundancies at the mine.

The incident at Austar that killed two miners in April 2014 was stress driven and definitely not a gas outburst, NSW chief inspector Rob Regan told International Coal News.