As of December 2024, the Dawson mine is a joint operation between Anglo American (represented by either Anglo Coal (Dawson) Limited or Anglo Coal (Dawson South) Pty Ltd) and Mitsui Moura Investment Pty Ltd. and is operated by Anglo American.
On November 25, 2024, PT Delta Dunia Makmur Tbk, through its subsidiary BUMA International, has signed a binding agreement with Peabody Energy Corporation to acquire a 51% stake in the Dawson Complex. Dawson, part of Anglo American’s Steelmaking Coal portfolio, is being sold to Peabody under a separate agreement, with Peabody set to transfer ownership to BUMA International after completing its transaction with Anglo American.
These transactions are expected to be completed in 2025.
| Contractor | Contract | Description | Ref. Date | Expiry | Source |
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Macmahon Holdings Ltd.
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Mining
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In 2024, Macmahon Holdings was reappointed as the mining contractor of Anglo American’s Dawson South project.
Macmahon is the incumbent mining contractor at the Dawson South project and will continue to provide open cut mining services utilising the current Macmahon workforce, including load and haul and equipment maintenance under the new contract.
The contract commences on 1 July 2024 for a period of up to three years.
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Jul 1, 2024
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2027
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Stanwell Corporation Limited
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Power supply
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Anglo American’s steelmaking coal business in Australia will be powered by 100 per cent renewable energy from 2025, as part of a 10-year deal with Queensland government-owned energy generator Stanwell.
The deal will power all electrical equipment at Anglo American’s mines in Moranbah, Middlemount and Moura, coal preparation facilities, lighting and ventilation and cooling infrastructure, water treatment plant and administration facilities.
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Nov 16, 2022
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10
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Summary:
The Dawson deposit is located towards the south eastern corner of the basin, with structural disturbance and faulting increasing to the north, and depositional complexity, shown by an increase in split seams, to the south. The Dawson opencast operation extracts coal from the Baralaba Coal Measures, which contain seven main seams. All except two seams have been mined.
Dawson Mine is located in the Bowen Basin, approximately 200 km south-west of Gladstone, Queensland, on the eastern limb of the Mimosa Syncline. The project targets five coal seams (A, B, C, D, E in order of geological age from youngest to oldest) belonging to the late Permian-aged Baralaba Coal Measures (BCM). The seams dip broadly to the west at around 10° with several splits and coalescences. Interburden lithologies are predominantly alluvial floodplain facies consisting of lithofelspathic sandstone, siltstone, coal, and tuff (Leisemann et al., 1992). Underlying the BCM is the Kaloola Member (KM), which is characterised by abundant tuffs and thin, tuffaceous, non-economic coals interbedded with deltaic and prodeltaic siltstones and sandstones. The Kaloola Tuff, which is a stratigraphic marker horizon equivalent to the Yarrabee Tuff elsewhere in the Bowen Basin, is typically located within the E seam floor at a variable depth (Gonano, 1980).
The main regional structures in the Dawson Mine area are NNW-trending, thin-skinned, low-angle thrusts representing the southern part of the Jellinbah Thrust Belt, albeit with diminished complexity and severity (Sliwa et al., 2008). A subordinate minor thrust system varying in strike from WNW to EW is also present and is possibly the result of reactivation of basement fault systems during compressional tectonism. Minor EW normal faults are also observed but tend to lack lateral continuity. Large crossbedding structures are frequently encountered due to channel deposition and lateral migration discordant to seam structure. Other structures typical of a compressive tectonic environment and present in the Dawson Mine area include bedding plane shears, low-angle reverse faults, and thrust ramps with minor seam displacement. Locally within the pit 6-8 area, faults are NW-to-NNW trending thrusts.
Summary:
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.
Summary:
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.
The mine produces coking, soft coking and thermal coal.