A pre-feasibility study on the project is expected to be delivered by the end of June, providing the first commercial vision for mining.

Nowa Ruda, in the traditional coking coal region of Poland’s Lower Silesian Coal Basin, consists of a single exploration concession encompassing two adjacent substantial deposits, Waclaw and Lech.

In the latest drilling results, Lech hole CHL-4 has intersected four seams and/or seam composites all with substantial thicknesses ranging from 1.82m to 5.78m at depths ranging from 870.04m to 999.43m, the Australian junior said yesterday.

“Three out of four holes in the current program at Lech have delivered substantial intersections of high quality coking coal and this is a major boost for the project, far exceeding the thicknesses contained at equivalent locations in the current JORC resource model for Nowa Ruda,” Balamara said.

“Hole CHL-4 was drilled between CHL-2 and CHL-3 and confirms the earlier positive results highlighted by these two holes.

“These three significant intersections with multiple seams at different levels extend over a strike length of approximately 1.5km.

“The results indicate very good continuities of individual coal seams and this is likely to result in a significant proportion of the upgraded JORC resources going into the indicated category, forming a very solid basis for the PFS.”

The third Waclaw hole, CHW-3, also intersected three “very acceptable” seams and/or seam composites in the vicinity of 2m in thickness (1.96-2.07m).

Balamara said these were thicker that what was obtained in CHW-1 and CHW-2.

The company has mandated HDR Salva to provide an updated JORC resource for Nowa Ruda and it is expected that these results will deliver a “substantial” increase to the maiden JORC resource delivered last year.

The revised JORC resource is expected by the end of May 2015 as Balamara is still awaiting final coal quality data, which is due over the next 30 days from the local laboratories doing the analytical work.

Balamara is continuing to focus on its core objective of becoming the “next significant European coal producer” through the development of its three tier one Polish coal projects over the medium term.

The Mariola thermal coal project is likely to be the first mine into production, targeting end of 2016; followed by the Nowa and finally the world-scale Sawin North thermal coal project.