Reaching production of 5.1Mt in the last financial year, New Hope said the 5-6Mt target was imprecise due to uncertainty on the performance of Queensland Rail.

But New Hope is pushing forward to expand throughput capacity at subsidiary Queensland Bulk Handling’s ship loading facility on Fishermans Island, off the Port of Brisbane.

In the 2009-09 financial year, QBH achieved throughput of 6.1Mt. New Hope’s expansion is on schedule to ramp up the capacity to 10Mt per annum by October 2010.

In its AGM presentation, New Hope said the ground works were 90% complete and the work on the project would have minimal impact on ship loading operations.

The expansion of the New Acland open cut mine in southeast Queensland will be officially completed following the delivery of one piece of mobile equipment in January.

Mining rates over the past few weeks have already hit the new target capacity of 4.8Mtpa, the coal producer says.

The mine’s new equipment includes three large overburden trucks, an excavator and a large front-end loader.

In addition, the second wash plant was beefed up from 350 tonnes per hour capacity to 550tph, taking the total wash capacity of the mine to 1300tph.

New Hope recently completed a large drilling program at the mine to upgrade geological models and assist mine planning.

Over at the Oakleigh mine some 100km east of New Acland, the company expects the open cut operation to continue extracting the remnant coal at 200,000-300,000tpa for at least another year.

The mine was slated for closure in February and New Hope plans to review the decision every six months.

Commenting on the recent 32.8km, 2D seismic survey at the New Lenton project, the company has identified the underlying Rider and Leichardt seams and will follow up with more exploration in mid-2010.

New Hope said prefeasibility studies for the project were assessing both open cut and underground options.

The drill core to date reveals a mixed bag of coal types, with thermal, pulverised coal injection coal and hard coking coal evident.

Meanwhile, recent media reports have prompted New Hope to state it is not holding discussions with third parties over its 16.8% shareholding in Arrow Energy.

New Hope bought up shares in Arrow back when they were 58c each, with the shares in the coal seam gas player currently around $3.98.

New Hope ended the last financial year with cash of $220,348 and $2.48 billion held on deposit with major banks.

Shares in New Hope closed down 0.23% to $4.27 yesterday.