South Africa's Universal Coal announced Monday that it expected to start exporting thermal coal from its Kangala mine through the Richards Bay Coal Terminal from July onward after it had started the cold commissioning of the mine's washing plant's dense media separation circuit.
The junior miner said in a statement that it expected to begin hot commissioning of the DMS circuit on Thursday, with full operations to start in mid-June, which would enable it to produce export quality thermal coal.
"With the completion of the DMS, the entire colliery will be on opex and completion testing as required by project financing arrangements may commence," it said.
Universal started production at Kangala in early March and delivered the first thermal coal from the mine to state-owned utility Eskom in early April, which marked the beginning of a 16-year, 2 million mt/year coal sales agreement.
The miner said that it had already sold 260,737 mt of coal to date from the 70.5%-owned Kangala Colliery, which is situated in the Mpumalanga province's Witbank coalfield and expected to produce 2.1 million mt/year of salable thermal coal.
