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Lenton, located northeast of Moranbah, Queensland and adjacent to Peabody Pacific's Burton mine, has an indicated and inferred resource of 84 million tonnes.
Company chairman Robert Millner said the resources are in the Rangal coal measures and are likely to enable production of both metallurgical and thermal coal for export.
“We are in the process of formulating our development plan for Lenton, including further resource definition of opencut and potential underground coal resources," Millner said.
“The development of opencut and potential underground mining resources at Lenton may well enable New Hope to diversify into the metallurgical coal market in the coming years."
He added port capacity constraints will likely impact the project development schedule up to 2010.
The lease is for 15 years and commenced yesterday.
New Hope was trading down 4.08% mid-morning at $A4.94.
