Dalrymple Bay terminal, the operators of north Queensland's largest coal terminal, said that the Federal Government's planned tax rise on the resources industry is not likely to cut demand at the facility.

Mr Russell Smith CEO of Dalrymple Bay terminal said that they have seen no evidence that mining companies will scale back or cancel projects due the to tax and the company is continuing preliminary planning for further increases to the port's capacity. He says there is likely to be a strong demand for Australian coal well into the future.

He added that "The studies that we've undertaken and independent studies have reinforced the fact that there is sufficient demand in the global marketplace, particularly when you're looking at metallurgical coal. There's no substitute for metallurgical coal when you're manufacturing steel. We've seen the Asian economy continuing to grow through the financial crisis and that will underpin growth going forward. We have a significant amount of additional volume requests from our customers. Whilst the new tax may affect some of that, it certainly won't affect all of that and we're trying to progress with an expansion at the moment and that may ultimately affect what the end number is, but we don't expect it to be a significant impact."

(Sourced from www.abc.net.au)