Metallurgical Coal operates six mines in Australia: one wholly owned, and five in which it has a controlling interest. Five of the mines are located in Queensland’s Bowen Basin: Moranbah North (metallurgical coal), Capcoal (metallurgical and thermal coal), Foxleigh (metallurgical coal), Dawson (metallurgical and thermal coal) and Callide (thermal coal).

The Bowen Basin of eastern Australia contains up to 10 km of largely clastic sediment from terrestrial and shallow marine origin along with substantial volumes of economic coals. The German Creek Formation (GCM), the Moranbah coal measures (MCM) and the Rangal Group Measures (RCM) host most of the open pit and underground mining operations. Basin sediments were sourced from emergent volcanic uplands, so clasts are generally lithic and form clay-rich weathering products. The basal unit of the GCM is marine and devoid of coal, and overlain by a delta plain coal bearing sequence of siltstones, some sandstones, and interbedded, often carbonaceous, siltstone and sandstone with coals. The MCM comprises alluvial plain sediments overlying a shallow marine shelf, with sequences of thick sheets of lithic sandstone and interbedded siltstone-sandstone generally overlying carbonaceous siltstone and coal. The basin-wide RCM sequence comprises sandstones, siltstones, interbedded sandstone-siltstone, carbonaceous siltstones, and coals, and is overlain by a noncoal bearing alluvial sequence of massive sandstone and siltstone. Several tuffaceous marker beds occur, some of which are lithified while others form thin bands of high plasticity clay. In most areas there is a Tertiary unconformity overlain by sheets of clay-bound alluvial or lacustrine sediments, and in some areas there are basalt flows.

Deep weathering cycles occurred during Tertiary time, and modern drainage courses include alluvial sequences to depths of 20m or more. Weathering alteration includes leaching, laterisation, and transformation to clay. Depths of distinct weathering to complete transformation range from 15m to 45m. Bowen Basin coal measures rock material strengths range from extremely low (UCS <2MPa) to high (20 to 60MPa) and generally average 10 to 25MPa. Typically material stiffnesses fall into the low to moderate modulus ratio range.

Dawson mine is a large open-cut coal mining operation in Queensland that historically had been operated as a strip mine, with multiple draglines exposing coal in a westerly direction and dumping spoil to the east. In response to a shortage of dump space, insufficient progress with progressive rehabilitation and the ongoing disturbance of land, the operation made changes to address these increasing closure liabilities. This included backfilling depleted open pits, which involved changing the fleet for this part of the mine to truck and shovel.

Highwall mining is a low cost, low impact mining method to extract otherwise uneconomic coal at the end of an open cut pit life. It has been extensively used in the USA and Australia including at Glencore’s Newlands and Ulan mines and Anglo American’s Dawson mine.

Dawson Coal plant is the largest coal handling and preparation plant (CHPP) in Australia. The raw coal system will accept coal from three separate mine sources delivered by an overland conveyor system, with the CHPP processing at 2000 tonnes per hour in two stage mode and up to 3400 tonnes per hour in single stage mode. The state-of the-art plant contains dense medium cyclones, spirals and flotation circuits. The product coal will then be loaded via high capacity automated reclaimers to a new rail load out facility.