Sydney-based Auminco Mines has put together a portfolio of coal and minerals projects in Mongolia and Australia.

Its lead project is the Khongkor Zag coal project, which sits around 60km from the Chinese border in Mongolia.

“It’s an anthracite project – a metallurgical coal, so it’s a little bit different to any other coal that’s being mined in Mongolia,” Auminco chief executive officer Matt Morgan told MiningNews.net.

The company has already applied for a mining licence – a process which takes around six months – and will use the JORC resource as the basis for scoping and prefeasibility studies.

The project has a Russian resource as a result of previous work, but Auminco is working on converting it to JORC standard.

“Upon granting of the (mining licence) we can actually start mining straight away, so we want to get some bulk samples out,” Morgan said.

“We’ve got three steel mills to the south of us, so great offtake potential.”

Morgan believes the company can get the project to production in 2-2.5 years.

“I’d envisage this as a 1-1.5 million tonne production. It’s not a big show, so it’s under the radar,” he said.

“It’s just like a small quarrying show compared to the Queensland coal stuff and the Hunter Valley.”

The project benefits from being only 2km from a major haul road and adjacent to a diesel storage unit.

“It’s got a lot of pluses,” Morgan said. “The key thing you need is infrastructure; you’ve got to be close to the border and you need water and this ticks all those boxes.”

Auminco’s other main project is Berkh Uul, which is right on the Russian border and also close to infrastructure.

The project has a JORC-compliant resource of 42 million tonnes of thermal coal and an exploration target of an additional 23Mt.

On listing, the company plans to seek a mining lease and Morgan said Burkh Uul would be around six months behind Khongkor Zag permitting wise.

Morgan said the ASX float would allow the company to bring its two key projects into production.

Auminco has another three greenfields coal projects and an iron ore-zinc project in Mongolia, all of which are in early stages.

Morgan said the iron ore-zinc project was particularly interesting.

“The first two trips we got outcropping (iron) on the surface. It’s a red-hot target.”

Despite the bad press Mongolia has received lately, Auminco said the country was a great place to operate.

The company has two Mongolian executive directors, as well as Mongolian shareholders.

Morgan said the cost structure and approvals process were competitive.

“We can get a mining licence in six months – it’s just unheard of in Australia,” he said.

Auminco chairman Andrew Whitten said the Mongolian government announced last month that it would look at amending foreign investment laws so that only state-owned enterprises would require government approval, which was another positive.

“There is capital available for investment in Mongolia,” he said, pointing to Guildford Coal’s successful raisings and finance.

“If there’s big capex involved in projects it’s very hard to get them going, whereas ours are the opposite.

“China’s not going anywhere – their demand is not going anywhere.”

In Australia, Auminco has a 860,000t Stanton cobalt-copper-nickel project in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Rio Tinto spent nearly $4 million drilling there in the 1990s.

“By itself it’s a little bit small for a stand-alone operation, so we did a joint venture with Toro Energy – they’ve got the surrounding EL tenement,” Morgan said.

The company has set an exploration target of 6.8Mt, including the existing resource.

In Victoria, Auminco has acquired the 47,000 ounce Reedy Creek gold project from Beadell Resources.

“The majority of it is down to 150m so we can get an open pittable mining resource,” Morgan said.

Whitten said the timeline for an ASX listing was 3-4 months.

“We’re looking to list through either a front door or a back door over the next quarter,” he said. “We’re just finalising the corporate structure.

“We’ll be raising $5-10 million through whichever structure makes the most commercial sense.”

Morgan was exploration manager for Coalworks, while former Coalworks CEO Dr Andrew Firek is on the board, with Coalworks co-founders Chris Hagan and Sin Pyng Teng corporate advisor and corporate consultant, respectively.