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.

Foxleigh Mine is located in Queensland’s Bowen Basin coalfield, 12km south of Middlemount and 272km northwest of Rockhampton. The mine was established in 1999 as an open cut operation producing benchmark quality, LV PCI coal for the export market.

Mining is undertaken using the truck and shovel method with raw coal delivered to Foxleigh’s coal handling and preparation plant (“CHPP”) for washing.

A new 540t/h CHPP consisting of a raw coal dump hopper, feeder breaker, ROM crushing station, processing through dense medium cyclone, a TBS plant, a flotation plant and product handling system.

The CHPP has processing capacity in excess of 4Mtpa of raw coal. Product coal is hauled 27km on a private haul road to a dedicated train loading facility located alongside the Capcoal rail loop and is then railed 280km to the Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal (“DBCT”) at the Port of Hay Point near Mackay, Queensland.