The company said one diamond drillhole at the site revealed promising washability and “very good” coking coal characteristics. Tranche samples from the project’s outcrop area exhibited similar qualities under analysis at Russia’s SGS laboratory.

Samples from four other drillholes are en-route to SGS in hope of expanding the picture of a commercially viable deposit.

Celsius said the findings conformed with historical Soviet-era data, which suggested a deposit-wide high thermal product with promising coking coal qualities.

In August, Celsius announced a 5000m drilling campaign and an exploration target of 500-700 million tonnes of coal.

The drilling will build on 30,000m of cored drillholes completed during the Soviet-era and 15,000m of trenching and adits.

Tuyuk-Kargasha covers 800ha and contains 23 coal seams, with individual seams up to 8.7m thick based on historical intersections.

A semi-industrial scale plant left over from the Soviet program is still present.

Celsius officially changed its name last Friday. It was previously called View Resources.