Coal explorer African Energy Resources is reportedly set to ship 1000 tonnes of coal from its flagship Sese project in Botswana to Mozambique’s port of Matola.

African Energy managing director Frazier Tabeart told Botswana’s Mmegi newspaper that the company was preparing the shipment in order to study and optimize the rail system’s capacity ahead of increased output.

“We believe that currently, there’s a real opportunity for Botswana to become an exporter of coal in the short term,” he said.

“We did a successful trial shipment of coal to Maputo and we are looking at how that route can be improved from an operating efficiency point of view.”

In April, the company shipped 25t of the country’s first coal bound for the sea in an exercise meant to demonstrate the viability of Botswana-Mozambique rail infrastructure.

Coal was transported from Sese to Matola in five days via the city of Bulawayo and southern Zimbabwe.

The ramp-up of African Energy’s trial runs from 25t to 1000t is expected to encourage advanced coal sector players on the continent keen to access lucrative Asian markets.

African Energy has progressed steadily with Sese, having confirmed the suitability of the project’s coal in boiler tests last month and sketched a supply deal with a local power utility.

Last month, Sese established a 650 million tonne JORC-compliant measured coal resource.

The project is expected to produce 1-2 million tonnes per annum of coal from mid-2013 and 4-5Mtpa in 2015.