Mariola is the most recent addition to Balamara’s Polish coal portfolio, with the company just receiving finalising due diligence and receiving shareholder approval for the transaction.

The project lies in the heart of the Upper Silesian region, one of the largest coal-producing regions in Europe, where most Polish thermal power stations are situated.

The exploration target tonnage range targets the two deepest seams in the deposit, where drilling to date has achieved only limited sampling.

Additional deep drilling would be required to potentially bring this exploration target into the resource.

The updated estimate has been compiled from historical drilling and one additional drill hole done after the last resource estimate in 2014, supervised by geologists from Carbon Investment, the company which holds the Mariola concession.

The total resource of 120.6Mt represents a 56% increase over the previous resource of 77.1Mt.

The increased resource is mainly due to a revised interpretation of the minimum core recovery required for a coal quality point of observation.

Previously, coal quality samples with a linear core recovery of 90% or greater were used to classify the resource.

In this estimate, a statistical review of the relationship between coal quality and linear core recovery shows that there is no observable bias in the coal quality statistics per seam until much lower core recoveries of around 50% are reached.

Consequently, the core recovery threshold for a coal quality point of observation has been set at 70% in this estimate. This has resulted in the inclusion of some of the main seams within the deposit into the resource, which had previously only been reported as part of the exploration target tonnage range.