Gympie’s plans to improve resource recovery from the Greta Seam were announced in the September 2003 quarter results. The Greta Seam ranges in height from 6m-8m and the current longwall only mines around 3.5m of that.
Gympie managing director, Harry Adams confirmed that the company was assessing various longer-term scenarios for the underground resource, including thick-seam extraction technology that has been successfully applied in many similar thick-seam situations in China. (See related articles, links in left column).
Adams said at this stage prima facie evidence suggests the seam and coal characteristics at the site render the method worth serious consideration. It is early days yet and conceptual studies are underway.
“These studies aim to convert a much greater proportion of the 141Mt coal resource into coal reserves, as well as opening the possibility of mining the Greta Seam deeper than currently assumed for resource/reserve estimation purposes,” Adams said.
In other news, Gympie reported that Southland mine has begun mining its first panel with the newly installed second-hand longwall equipment. Southland continued to perform well during the quarter with the five-year plan finalising planned run of mine output of 1.8 to 2.5 million tonnes per annum.
Southland produced 537,000 tonnes run-of-mine coal in the September 2003 quarter, a vast improvement on the 176,588t produced during the same period last year. For the 2003-04 financial year production is expected to be somewhere between 1.8 to 2.2Mt.
The move from panel SL3 to the 1.5 Mt SL4 block was completed about one week ahead of schedule and production from SL4 started this week. The new block has been fitted with the recently purchased, near-new longwall face equipment from the Moonee colliery.
“This upgrade should increase the longwall’s reliability and its ability to cope with varying ground conditions,” the company said.
Longwall panel SL4 contains over 1.5 million tonnes of coal and the changeover to SL5 is scheduled for early in 2004-05.
Development proceeded well with one continuous miner unit being utilised. A total of 1,195 metres of advance was achieved during the quarter, which equates to 8m per shift.
The feasibility study into a potential open-cut on the Southland lease area is continuing with loxline drilling now being carried out. The pre-feasibility study estimated that a resource of about 2Mt could be accessed via an open cut. The feasibility study is expected to be completed during the March 2004 quarter.
Sales revenue has increased by 150% over the past six months and is expected to increase a further 45% over the coming six months.
