30 June 2008
BISICHI MINING PLC
Black Wattle Colliery commences commercial production at open cast operations
Bisichi Mining PLC (‘Bisichi’), the mining company with direct coal mining
operations in South Africa, is pleased to announce that the open cast operation
at its subsidiary, Black Wattle Colliery (‘Black Wattle’), has just commenced
commercial production on schedule. The area being mined by open cast method
contains high yielding export quality thermal coal. Bisichi has owned and
operated Black Wattle in Middelburg, Mpumalanga since 1994.
Andrew Heller, Managing Director of Bisichi, said: ‘ We recently opened up a
secondary adit at our open cast site through which the coal moves by
underground conveyor and is then fed into our main washing plant. In addition
to taking advantage of our existing conveyor belt network, we’ve eliminated any
requirement to transport the coal from our opencast site by road, thus reducing
dust, noise, and other forms of environmental pollution. As I’ve stated
previously, open cast mining will lower the average cost of production,
increase washing plant yields, and will allow Black Wattle to mine its reserves
more flexibly. We will now increase our open cast operations with the benefits
of full production being realised in the second half of the year.’
There are additional significant open cast reserves at Black Wattle for which
Department of Minerals and Energy approval will be sought at a later date.
For further information, please call:
Andrew Heller/Tom Kearney, Bisichi Mining PLC 020 7415 5030
END
