September 08, 2008

Miranda\'s coal projects near production

miningmx.com reported that South African miner Miranda Minerals will soon bring a 30,000 tonnes to 50,000 tonnes coal mine into production.

Mr Ron Nel CEO of Miranda told minigmx that it has six contiguous properties, with the first, Sesikhona awaiting a new order mining right to begin exploiting the 22 million tonne ore body in the eastern KwaZulu Natal province. He added that Sesikhona could produce up to 50,000 tonnes of coal a month, most of which will be exported. There is an upper seam, which lends itself to Eskom coal, but no talks have been held with the coal hungry power utility yet.

Miranda has five other properties near Sesikhona, which it will spend the next two months drilling and hopes to submit applications for mining rights to the Department of Minerals and Energy by the end of the first quarter, with the intention of securing those rights by the end of the year. In total, there is an estimated saleable reserve of 200 million tonnes of hard and soft coking coal.

Mr Nel said that “We believe coal transport will move back to the permit and rail system because the South African roads cannot take anymore trucks. We will lease three stations, put in sidings and blending plants because there’s a lot of money in blending and you can blend to Eskom specifications.”

KwaZulu Natal coal is of a very high quality, generally anthracite and which is largely exported.