The mine modification was approved by the New South Wales government last week.
The 55m deep, 5.5m diameter shaft will help improve ventilation in the underground workings.
To be located about 400m south of John Renshaw Drive, the raise bore construction of the shaft is expected to take 12 weeks.
The Abel Underground mine is permitted to extract up to 4.5 million tonnes per annum of raw coal using bord and pillar mining methods.
The coal is trucked on private haul roads to the nearby coal handling and processing plant at the Bloomfield colliery.
Donaldson became a wholly owned subsidiary of commodities trader Noble Group in the March quarter.
