The profit, in accordance with Chinese accounting standards, was up 46.2% on the previous year, thanks to high coal prices.

The company said its Australian operation, Austar in New South Wales, had failed to hit a target of 2 million tonnes due to "natural disasters", XFN Asia reported.

According to International Longwall News’ statistics the mine produced 1.55Mt last year.

Run-of-mine output for the entire group was down slightly at 35.64Mt. Yanzhou cited "strict enforcement of safety rules" for the slip.

XFN Asia reported Yanzhou had 9.51Mt under contract this year at average prices up 38.1%.

In 2008 the company plans to sell 34.4Mt and export 500,000t of that.