The company announced yesterday it had completed the plant and was now ready to pump coal from the face of the mine down a 10km steel pipeline to the plant for processing and initial stockpiling.

Pike said a key design feature was that water used in the coal slurry pipeline to bring raw coal from the mine will be washed and pumped back up a parallel pipe to the mine for re-use.

The 1.5 million tonnes per annum plant was constructed by Nelson-based Brightwater Engineering in a joint venture company with an Australian design engineer. It has been completed within budget.

The New Zealand mine is expected to produce 200,000t of coal by June 30 next year and then an average of 1Mtpa for the life of mine.