The company also blamed weak coal prices for negatively impacting on its business in the March quarter.

“Subsequent to quarter end, on 15 April an underground incident occurred at the Austar Mine, resulting in two fatalities,” the company said.

“Our thoughts are with the families, colleagues and friends of the two employees.

“The operating activities and 2014 outlook will be subject to review.”

Recovery teams successfully recovered the two miners by late Thursday last week.

Production of 4.16 million tonnes saleable coal (equity share) and total sales of 4.06Mt for the March quarter was broadly in line with budget.

NSW underground operations Ashton, Austar and Donaldson had various issues with mining conditions but performed in-line with budget.

Open-cut operations Moolarben, Yarrabee and Gloucester performed well.

“Prices continued to deteriorate versus the preceding quarter, hitting multi-year lows,” the company said.

“Coal market macro trends in the quarter were negative.

“Coal prices, for both metallurgical and thermal products, continued to deteriorate in over the course of the quarter with prices hitting multi-year lows.

“The Australian Dollar /US Dollar exchange rate movement remains volatile, and traded in a range of 0.87c – 0.92c.

“The overall appreciation of the Australian dollar year to date is negative factor for Yancoal coal revenues.

“Yancoal’s product split (equity share) for the quarter was 53% thermal / 47% metallurgical coal.”