Winchester South is located in Queensland near the township of Moranbah in the Central part of the Bowen Basin which contains numerous important coal producing intervals in the Permian stratigraphy. Coal seams are found in Late Permian Rangal Coal Measures, the Ft. Cooper Coal Measures and the Moranbah Coal Measures. The main host-rock types of these sub-groups are sandstone, siltstone with minor stratigraphic layers of conglomerate, and tuffaceous bands.

Structurally the deposit is dominated by the Winchester Syncline which has been itself affected by reverse and normal faulting.

The deposit trends ~14km northwest-southeast following the Winchester South syncline and is ~4km wide at its maximum. The deposit extends to a depth of ~800m below the topographic surface for the Moranbah Coal Measures seams.

The open cut mining areas for the Project would be mined through conventional truck and shovel mining methods. The open cut mining operational areas would generally include supporting infrastructure such as haul roads, bunding, embankments, soil stockpiles, hardstands and water management structures.

Mining operations would generally occur 24 hours per day, seven days per week, with open cut mining activities and general sequence entailing:

- progressive clearing of vegetation occurring on areas required for the mining operation in accordance with prescribed procedures;
- stripping and stockpiling of soil from disturbed areas for storage and reuse in future rehabilitation of the mine landforms in accordance with prescribed procedures;
- pre-stripping of weathered tertiary sediments (e.g. unconsolidated/friable overburden, including clays) using scrapers, excavators and trucks;
- drilling and blasting (using commercial products, with the principal blasting agent being ammonium nitrate fuel oil [ANFO] only to be conducted during the daytime) for fragmentation of competent overburden and interburden as waste rock;
- removal of waste rock and inter-seam partings to expose the underlying coal seams, and placement in out-of-pit waste rock emplacements, or as infill in the mine void behind advancing mining operations, using a combination of dozers, excavators and trucks;
- mining of coal and haulage to the ROM coal handling facilities using a combination of dozers, excavators, loaders and trucks; and
- re-shaping of the waste rock emplacements, re-application of topsoil (or topsoil/subsoil) and revegetation of the final landform surfaces as described in the rehabilitation strategy.

The mobile equipment used for the Project would vary according to the requirements of the open cut mining operations. It would include a combination of excavators and/or shovels and haul trucks, with a support fleet that includes dozers, graders, front end loaders, drill rigs and water trucks.

Approximately 353 Mt of ROM coal would be mined over the life of the Project.

Coal mining would involve loaders, excavators and/or shovels loading ROM coal into trucks for haulage to the ROM pad at the MIA, via internal haul roads.

ROM coal would be either dumped directly into a ROM hopper feeding the CHPP, or dumped onto a ROM pad, for subsequent rehandling and processing over the life of the mine.

A crushing and screening plant would be located at the ROM hopper. The crushing and screening plant would operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. ROM coal would be reclaimed from the ROM hopper via a feeder and primary sizer, and conveyed to a secondary sizing station.

Sized coal would be conveyed to a raw coal surge bin or the product coal stockpile (bypass coal).

From the raw coal surge bin, coal would be fed to the coal preparation plant (CPP) for processing.

Beneficiation: when applied to coal, it is the process of separating mined coal into various density groups through mechanical and dense medium processes.

Metallurgical Factors:
- It is assumed that a combination of density separation (magnetite/water) and fines flocculation processes would be applicable for the processing of Winchester South coal. Further work is required to better understand the washability characteristics of the various seams with a focus on their size distribution given the vitrinite macerals report to the finer fractions.