The company, which is seeking to revamp Moranbah North after a roof collapse last year, is maintaining its long-term strategy despite a 28% drop in coal prices in the fourth quarter to $170/t, coal chief executive Seamus French said.

“In the Moranbah region specifically, we have a vision of longwall excellence for the Grosvenor and Moranbah South projects,” he wrote in his December newsletter.

“To achieve this we are designing a safe, reliable mining system, capable of reaching cutting rates 50 per cent higher than we have previously been able to achieve in the Goonyella middle seam.”

Over the past 12 months, Anglo American has looked around the world at successful longwall mines as part of its international benchmarking work and those learnings, combined with the right equipment and operating systems, will ensure it achieves and sustains benchmark longwall system performance in its expansion program, French said.

“It is also becoming very clear to us that getting performance right at Moranbah North will help us get the design of our future longwalls right as well, and Moranbah North mine’s performance improvement in recent months tells us our ambition is achievable,” he said.

“Moranbah North’s turnaround has been beyond our expectations. A lot of work has been done to improve safety, equipment reliability and cutting rates and Moranbah North is finishing the year at Grosvenor levels, miles ahead of where we were this time last year.”

French said the company had anticipated this downturn and had been working hard since Q1 2012 to get its costs under control.

“We have now completed a tough but necessary restructure and are in a much better position to not only survive the current downturn, but to continue to deliver savings and perform when the upturn occurs,” he said.

The $1.7 billion Grosvenor coal mine is expected to produce 5 million tonnes per annum of coal for export markets over its projected life of 26 years.

The mine will feature a standard longwall design and will target the same coal seam as Anglo American’s existing Moranbah North mine.

It is expected to start production in 2013, with commissioning of the longwall in 2016.