The Belfast mine is located some 10km south-west of the town of Belfast in Mpumalanga, South Africa, on the far eastern edge of the Witbank coalfield. The coalfield extends about 190km east-west between the towns of Springs and Belfast, and about 60km in a north-south direction between the towns of Middelburg and Ermelo. The mineral tenure areas of Umsimbithi Mining and Universal Coal (Paardeplaats) are to the north of Belfast with the Umsimbithi Mining Wonderfontein coal mine to the far west.

Belfast Coal has an approved mining right that covers 7,198ha. The geological model incorporates 616 boreholes. The geological database also includes 113 boreholes outside the mining right area.

Belfast geology.
The Witbank coalfield has up to five coal seams in the middle Ecca group sediments of the Karoo supergroup. The Karoo sequence in the area is represented by the Dwyka formation and the middle Ecca with little or no lower Ecca development. The middle Ecca sequence of coal horizons interbedded with sediments is highly truncated due to erosion with only very minor areas where the full sequence is developed. Locally, there are mainly three seams being targeted, seams 2 (S2), 3 (S3) and 4 (S4). Seam 5 (S5) was intersected in only two boreholes in the northern part of the project area. S2 the most prevalent seam is consistently developed, except in areas where it has been eroded, and has an average thickness of 2.8m dipping gently to the south. Both S3 and S4 are sporadically developed due to erosion and both have an average thickness of 0.6m. Due to the proximity of the northern edge of the Witbank Basin, the primary control of the coal development is the current weathering surface. The deposit is therefore divided by a perennial stream into two Resource blocks under two distinct spurs in the surface topography. There is no indication of pertinent faulting from the borehole information but potential intrusions of dolerite dykes are outlined by regional airborne magnetics, indicating the possible occurrence of regional north-south trending dykes.

Currently mining is taking place from three open pits using doze-over, truck and shovel hybrid mining method. By August 2021, two more box-cuts will be opened up. Once fully developed, the mine will have 11 opencast pits. There are prospects for additional opencast pits and an underground mining section.

Mining operations began in the first quarter of 2019.

The mining right has been approved and all environmental appeals have been favourably addressed for the declared Reserves. Coal Resources occur within most of the mining right whereas the Coal Reserve is limited to the southern mining right area aligned with the existing LoM plan. A project was initiated in 2019 to review the current exploitation strategy, including testing economic viability (macro-economic outlook) of the northern area considering open-cut and underground mining scenarios. This process lead to the implementation of a new exploitation strategy through which the schedule was optimised to align to the Exxaro early value extraction strategy over the remaining LoM.

Thermal coal is beneficiated in a two-stage dense medium separation plant to produce for the export market: RB1/RB2, Middlings 4 800 kilocalories per kilogram (kcal/kg) net as received products. About 15% of RoM, mainly S2 is sent to a crush and stack plant operation to enhance production throughput at Belfast mine, producing an RB3 product for the export market.