Altura completes maiden JORC-compliant Coal Reserve estimate at Delta Coal
Thursday, June 6 2013 - 06:22 AM WIB
ASX-listed Altura Mining Limited (AJM) announced on Wednesday the completion of a maiden coal reserve estimate at the Delta Coal operations in East Kalimantan.
AJM owns 33.3 percent of Delta coal operation which currently produces and sells a medium energy thermal coal at the rate of 1.5 million tons per annum (Mtpa). Plans are in place to lift production and sales to 2.0 Mtpa in 2014.
The independent Coal Reserve estimate was completed by Australian based mining group Xenith Consulting Pty Ltd (Xenith). Xenith have estimated a current Coal Reserve of 12.5 million tons consisting of 10.4 million tons in Proved classification and a further 2.1 million tons in Probable classification.
The maiden Coal Reserve estimates are based on a revised JORC compliant Coal Resource estimate of 61.4 million tons after applying realistic mining, metallurgical, economic, marketing, legal, environmental, social and government factors to the Coal Resources.
The mine has two defined Resource areas, namely Gunung Lampu located in the southeast of the tenement and the Noni area located in the northwest.
Both are serviced by a network of roads to the centrally located processing plant. Coal is crushed at the processing facility, from where another contractor is employed to haul coal to the stockpiling and barge loading facility approximately 5km away on a river in the Mahakam delta.
This facility currently has stockpiling capacity of 75,000 tons. Barges transport coal from the loading facility to the offshore loading point for transhipment into coal ships for delivery to market.
Delta Coal is in the process of ramping coal production up from 1.4 Mt in 2012 to 2.0 Mt in 2014. The expected production for 2013 is 1.5 Mt at a strip ratio of 10.8 bcm/rom tonnes. Production is split evenly between the Gunung Lampu and Noni mining areas.
The planned production rate from 2014 is 2.0 Mtpa coal with the average deposit strip ratio of 10.8 bcm/rom tons.
Editing by Dadan Wijaksana