For the quarter ended March 31, Gympie’s Southland longwall mine produced 285,233t ROM from the underground operations. Washed coal production totalled 262,585t, up from just 18,147t a year earlier and 248,140t in the December 2001 quarter. Total production was 301,000 tonnes and total sales were 303,843t.

A roadway development advance of 2756m was achieved for the quarter. The current continuous miner fleet of four machines will reduce back to three in the September quarter.

Development metreage per week has averaged 119m during the June 2001 quarter, 219m in the September 2001 quarter, 242m for the December 2001 quarter and 212 metres per week for the March quarter.

“Mining conditions have been typical of the Greta Seam for both development and longwall operations,” the company said in a statement. “The longwall has operated satisfactorily during the quarter, with conditions being generally as expected in the drive through the filled roadway of SL2.”

Gympie said the lease area hosted enough reserves to underpin production of over 50Mt coal. Current programs for surface and underground in-seam drilling are focused on confirming high-resolution seismic interpretation of the mine layout between structural features and also to test seam-gas and coal quality distribution in order to refine marketing plans and mine engineering.

Gympie also said the colliery’s lost time injury frequency rate of under 10 was best-quartile for underground coal mining.