While rehabilitation work was underway following the closure of the Blair Athol mine, these plans will be revised following Mapp’s aim to restart mining in the March quarter, for a mine life of just over nine years for average output of 2 million tonnes per annum of saleable thermal coal.

The sales and purchase agreement was only recently announced by Linc but the due diligence process has been ongoing for approximately for 12 months, with Linc awaiting the transfer of tenure to have it finalised.

Various other agreements between Linc and Rio have been negotiated, which includes a coal tolling agreement, power and water agreement for use between a restarted Blair Athol mine and the nearby Rio-run Clermont operation.

The transaction itself was encompassing, giving Linc Blair Athol’s mining equipment, housing arrangements and even rail and port capacity contracts for the mine covering options for the next five years, once operations restart.

The open cut mine planning will be modified from the previous plan, with the current mine plan including a highwall mining type method, targeting Seam 4 that hosts resources of approximately 46Mt and expected to result in 17.5Mt of product tonnes over nine years.

Mapp told ILN the plan was to look at trenching through the previously mined Seam 3 areas to open up the Seam 4 area for the highwall mining type method underneath.

A detailed mining plan is being completed and from that Linc’s teams will draft a plan of operations to submit to the Queensland government, which will outline the proposed mining and rehabilitation plans.

Mapp said work was underway while Linc waited for the transfer of tenure and the plan of operations would typically take approximately 35 days for approval.

“Some time in Q1 2014 we look to be out there mining,” Mapp told ILN.

A quick approval is also in the state’s interest with thousands of coal miners made redundant over the past 12 months.

Mapp said a recruitment drive might start in about four weeks, although Linc coal operations general manager Jason O’Rourke is expected to be in the community next week giving relevant businesses and councils an update.

About 120 jobs will be created by reopening the mine with Linc already due to fill at least nine key positions internally.

Roughly 170 jobs at Blair Athol were made redundant by the Rio-led JV last year, with Mapp expecting most of the required skill set to be available within the region.

“As of yesterday we had 140 people send us in their resumes without us putting anything out,” Mapp said.

“One gentleman, for instance, has worked there for 40 years as a dragline operator and is interested in coming back to work at the minesite, which has the potential to greatly assist our skill set.”

There are no plans to contract out the mine operations, with Mapp – recruited by Linc in February 2012 to add value to its coal portfolio – to assist Linc’s stated divestment or a demerger process, steadily employing personnel with a mine operational background to the extent that key engineering, environment and operational management positions for Blair Athol can be filled by them in-house.

Mapp said it would still need to fill some important positions such as technical services managers but the senior site executive and some other statutory roles were already employed in Linc.

One of the big opportunities with the Blair Athol acquisition is the potential for expansion via the operation of satellite pits on any resources proven up by Linc.

For example, Linc’s “Drummond” tenements over EPCA1228 and EPC1227 are about 40km away, which could link up to the mine’s infrastructure through building a haul road.

Linc’s coal assets include the Teresa longwall coal project, also in Queensland’s Bowen Basin, with Linc’s conventional coal tenements to be housed in NEC, which is designed to be demerged from Linc in the near future.

On the timing, Mapp said Linc’s process to delist from the ASX and list in Singapore is underway and would need to be completed first.

He expects that the NEC demerger process will consequently start early in 2014.

In terms of the origins of the move to acquire Blair Athol, Linc made an unsolicited approach to Rio approximately a year ago.

Rio might not seem to be getting the best end of the deal, with the Blair Athol JV agreeing to provide rehabilitation-related funds to NEC.

Mapp was not in a position to comment on Rio’s reasoning for the sale but suspected it would see benefit by removing the closed mine’s liability off its books.

He also believed it might help the mining house in the Clermont mine sale process.