Addressing shareholders at Pike River Coal's first annual general meeting as a publicly listed company, managing director Gordon Ward said difficulties in the tunnelling process had the project running a month behind schedule but all other factors were progressing as planned.
Production at the Pike River mine remains forecast at 240,000 tonnes in the first 12 months before building to 1 million tonnes the year after.
Construction of the mine's tunnel has now reached 1.63km with a further 666m to go before the company hits first coal.
In preparation for that, construction of a $NZ19.2 million coal preparation plant began this month and is expected to be completed by May next year, in time for the first coal extracted.
Next month sees the delivery of a Waratah Engineering roadheader to the site that will be joined by two Waratah Engineering continuous miners due to arrive in January 2008.
The mine has also taken possession of its first two flameproof load haul dump machines, two personnel transporters and a general purpose underground tractor in the past couple of months. These will be followed in the coming months with several more similar machines.
Coal from the mine will travel by road to Greymouth before being loaded onto two purpose-built vessels at Port Taranaki for export to the Indian, Japanese, Brazilian and European markets.
Ward said work on the mine design was well advanced, key staff had been recruited and the company was considering finance options while the mine was in pre-production stages.
A loss of $657,000 was announced by Pike River Coal for the 2007 fiscal year before the company completed a successful initial public offering in July 2007 that raised $85 million and allowed the repayment of short-term shareholder loans.
