The company believed there was excellent potential for additional reserves at Moabsvelden to be developed and extracted by means of underground mining in areas on the project site where easement and environmental considerations constrain open cut mining, Xceed managing director Ian Culbert said.
“The establishment of maiden JORC-compliant coal reserves for the Moabsvelden coal project is a major milestone for the company,” he said.
“With total proven and probable open cast reserves of 43.8 million tonnes, the Moabsvelden coal project is well positioned to become a substantial, long life mine. Our expectation at this stage is that a mine life in the order of 14 to 15 years currently exists, with excellent potential to increase this further.”
After the recent completion of a mining work program by Xceed’s mining consultants Belton Mining Group, the company reported proved and probable reserves for Moabsvelden of 30.7 million tonnes and 13.1Mt respectively.
The reserves were sufficient to support a 15-year mine life assuming annualised run of mine throughput of 3Mtpa, the company said.
The initial JORC compliant coal reserves for the Moabsvelden thermal coal project have been prepared as part of a definitive feasibility study currently being finalised and also as part of the company’s application to the Department of Mineral Resources for a mining licence for the project.
The reserves of 43.8Mt are inclusive of, and not additional to, the resource of 66.3Mt.
