He has been appointed CFO of the Brisbane-based coal company that holds projects in both Australia and Mongolia.

Wotherspoon was CFO of the Tinkler Group until July last year, prior to which he held positions at Actis and Ernst & Young.

He will begin work at Guildford on June 11 after relocating to Brisbane from Sydney.

Also this week Guildford announced production activities had begun at its South Gobi open cut coking coal mine in Mongolia, with principal contractor GrandPower starting overburden removal.

Overburden will be removed to just above top-of-coal.

Coal mining will proceed once surface infrastructure is in place and conformity of mining operations and facilities with submitted plans is verified, according to the company.

“The results are encouraging, indicating a coal type close in specification to prime coking coal,” Guildford said in a statement.

“The quality specification parameters are, at this time, deliberately described in a broad range.

“Guildford will establish more definitive parameters when two further test pits have been sampled and analysed allowing coal quality modelling to be further refined.”