Mitsui has been marketing Shenhua’s thermal coal to Japan for the past 10 years and said the alliance was founded on this long-term relationship.

“Specifically, in a wide range of global business areas, both companies will jointly develop supply of overseas coal to China, where coal demand has been rising rapidly in recent years, coal mine projects such as in Mongolia, where there are abundant coal reserves,” Mitsui announced this week.

Meanwhile, the Mongolian government is looking for a company to operate its mammoth Tavan Tolgoi coal project.

The country’s Mining Minister Dashdorj Zorigt told Bloomberg the bidding will be done in early October.

Shenhua is expected to be one of the bidders, while the Mongolian government-led project has been attracting interest from a host of companies for at least a year, including Peabody Energy and Vale, along with a Japanese consortium and a Korean consortium.

As of last year, the project contained 900.5 million tonnes of measured and indicated coking coal and 881Mt of inferred coking coal.

It also has 634Mt of measured and indicated thermal coal and 4 billion tonnes of inferred thermal coal.