CoAL of Africa has received an acceptance letter from the Department of Mineral Resources for a new order mining right application (NOMR) for their Makhado Coking Coal Project just north of the Soutpansberg. This comes almost a month after CoAL applied for the mining right.

The project is situated about 60km from Musina, a short distance away from their Chapudi Project.

In November last year, CoAL entered into a joint venture deal with mining company Rio Tinto. The Rio associates, Kwezi Mining, Chapudi Coal and CoAL, signed a memorandum of understanding that involved a joint venture and farm-swap agreement.

This rationalisation of the Chapudi Project will add about one billion tons to CoAL’s 947-million ton resource in the Soutpansberg coal basin.

According to John Wallington, CoAL’s chief executive officer, the company is progressing with extensive economic, social and environmental impact studies as part of an intensive process of formulating the detailed environmental management programme. He added that a detailed design phase of the Makhado project will commence once the “definitive feasibility study” has been finalised and approved by the company’s board of directors. The mine anticipates that this would occur by the end of June.

Previous core analysis of the Makhado Project has already been done by CoAL, with an indication of good quality coking coal, says Wallington.

In addition the Makhado Poject is close to the railway line which runs from Musina, which is also an important link to the Richards Bay Coal Terminal. In total the full scale of the project plan at Makhado is estimated at 5 million tonnes of coking coal per annum.