Quite a lot has happened over the past month at the coal-mining site of the Australian mining company, Coal of Africa Limited (CoAL).

Shortly after CoAL announced on Monday that Exxaro would not exercise their pre-emptive right to a 30% interest  in the Makhado project, its next announcement, that it had acquired a new Chinese partner, was all the more of a surprise.

On Tuesday, CoAL’s shares rebounded by as much as 19% when they announced a strategic partnership with Beijing Haohua Resources. This will see the Chinese thermal and anthracite coal producer inject $100 million into the Makhado project.

Haohua Resources, which is a unit of the Shanghai-listed Beijing Haohua Energy Resources, made the equity offer to CoAL in the Chinese company’s first ever investment outside of China. 

The $100 million capital injection will take place in two stages, according to CoAL. In the first phase, Haohua will make a $20 million payment to CoAL, taking a 4.8% to 5.2% shareholding by January, subject to regulatory approval by the Australian Foreign Investment Review Board.

In the meantime, CoAL’s independent consultants, Naledi Development, announced last week that affected or interested parties can now comment on the final environmental management plan (EMP) of the Makhado Colliery. The public will have until 28 November to lodge any comments or complaints regarding the project. A hard copy of the EMP can be viewed at the Makhado Public Library or the Makhado Municipality. Alternatively, it can be downloaded from Naledi’s website at www.naledidev.co.za.

This announcement raised several eyebrows, particularly since the Makhado colliery’s water-use licence is still a topic of great debate. Even so, the company has announced in its recent annual report that the Makhado mine “is well into the feasibility stage, with a draft definitive feasibility study havening been reviewed by the CoAL board in March 2012."

The application for their mining right was submitted in January last year and is already at an advanced stage.

As for CoAL’s Greater Soutpansberg project, no response had been received from the Department of Mineral Rights as to CoAL’s application for six prospecting rights that was submitted on the basis of amended EMPs.