Walter was awarded the contract for the project to develop three entrance roadways to provide fresh access to the Wongawilli seam and replace the access in the existing Bulli seam workings.

Gujarat said now that phase one was complete, it had decided to “take over the ownership of the work to further progress the mine’s development by deploying its own employees”

Gujarat head of technical services Dr Chris Harvey discussed the change.

“We had during the month rationalised the cost of operations by discontinuing the high-cost (double time) weekend production, partially in view of the potential reduction in export revenue caused by the falling US dollar,” he said.

“As such we have now returned back to the five-day weekday production schedule prevalent a year back.”

He added the company was confident about the long-term future of the mine and was committed to its plans to spend more than $A300 million in mine development to ramp up NRE No. 1 to 3 million tonnes per annum.

The Aussie dollar closed at US90.16c yesterday, up 2.8% from the start of October and 7% higher than at the start of August.

Shares in Gujarat closed up A2c yesterday to 63c, making the company one of the few gainers in a tough trading day for resource stocks.