Bounty Mining Limited has completed the upgrade of the Koorilgah Rail loop, which services the Cook Colliery in Queensland’s Bowen Basin.
Prior to Bounty restarting operations at Cook Colliery, in early 2018, the rail loop had been downgraded to a 20-tonne axle load capacity, due to a lack of maintenance under the previous mine owner. This limited Bounty to using partly loaded trains carrying 5,500 tonnes of coal at a time.
The company has spent $2 million on the upgrade, which saw the installation of new ballast, formation work, new sleepers, a weightometer and train overload facilities. The full capacity trains, with the ability to carry 8,500 tonnes, will deliver operating cost savings of at least $5 per tonne of coal in line with prospective forecasts.
“We are very pleased to have completed the rail upgrade slightly ahead of the original schedule, delivering a meaningful cost saving,” announced Bounty’s Executive, Chairman Gary Cochrane.
This announcement follows the finalisation of a successful transfer of a fourth continuous miner underground at Cook. After initial commissioning, Bounty has commented the machine is expected to commence cutting coal in the third week of August.
An additional sumping machine (a machine that mines additional coal from the pillars of a mine during the ‘retreat’ phase of production) is also scheduled to go underground at the end of August, which is expected to increase the mining rate to the nominal 1 Million tonnes per annum (Mtpa) run of mine rate from 6 September 2018.
Bounty is currently on track to achieve its target of 2.2Mtpa run of mine production in line with its production forecast for June Quarter FY19.
More information on this update and more can be accessed here.
