The company said the decision was made due to the nature of the deposit, depth of the resource and associated exploration and development costs.

New Age also revised its initial exploration target for the project after the analysis of additional seismic data.

The company has a revised target of 250 to 650 million tonnes, compared to an initial target of 200-800Mt.

New Age managing director Gary Fietz said the additional data supported the initial target.

“Further seismic interpretation work undertaken at the Cesar project has improved confidence in the exploration target,” he said.

“However, it has resulted in a small downgrade of the tonnage at the upper end of the target range.”

New Age expects the project to host high quality, low sulfur thermal coal with calorific values in the range of 6100 to 7000 kilocalories per kilogram.

Cesar is located at depths of between 800m and 1300m and is potentially accessible via modern, high productivity, mechanized underground mining methods.

Drilling is expected to commence once a strategic partner has been found.