It originally stood at 1.8 million tonnes as classified in February 2010.

The increase includes a 108% increase over the measured and indicated resources, which originally stood at 1.33Mt.

The London Stock Exchange-listed company said the upgraded resource to almost 4.7Bt was the result of additional coal resources being classified on the east, west and river blocks.

Ncondezi Coal chief executive officer Graham Mascall said the latest resource upgrade demonstrated the high amount of potential Ncondezi had.

“All resource blocks on the Ncondezi project have now been modelled and we are pleased to note that of the 4.7 billion tonnes classified, 1.3 billion tonnes has been classified in the indicated category which is eligible for transition into mineable coal reserves,” Mascall said.

The resource upgrade follows drilling completed for the project’s definitive feasibility study which finished up last September.

The drilling program so far identified coals seams amenable for open cut mining.

Mascall said the next phase of the DFS work program would be geared towards mine optimisation and scheduling.

The company is anticipating an update on the project’s coking coal potential to be released in the next four to six weeks.

The Ncondezi project is targeting first production in 2015.