With more than 30 years of experience in the coal industry, Mike Rowlands has been appointed the Head of Coal for Australasia, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

“I’m delighted that Mike has accepted the head of coal role,” RPM chief executive officer Richard Mathews said.

“His CV speaks for itself. He has extensive practical experience as a senior mine engineer working both on the client side for both open cut and underground operations, as well as in consulting firms as a consulting manager for underground coal undertaking work spanning from scoping right through to feasibility studies.

“Mike’s appointment is exceptionally timely for us. With deepening coal deposits, there is ongoing pressure to continue to find efficiency improvements in underground operations.

“RPM is committed to remaining a leader in coal and Mike, in his role as head of coal, will be an important part of that.”

Mathews added that this year, RPM launched a significant number of coal software products including underground coal and open cut coal XPAC solutions for mine scheduling, Coal Seam Agg for geological data integration and underground coal Talpac for longwall productivity simulation.

“In RPM’s 40 years of history, we’ve seen several booms and downturns and we truly understand the cyclic nature of the industry,” he said.

“Even though the coal industry is doing it tough right now, we know it will bounce back.”

RPM is Australian Securities Exchange-listed and has worked in more than 118 countries.