BCC ships its first Australian PCI coal

Australian developer Bowen Coking Coal (BCC) shipped the first coal from its 1.2mn t/yr Bluff pulverised coal injection (PCI) grade mine from Gladstone port last week and is on track to mine 5mn t/yr of coal by 2024.

The 35,000t cargo of ultra-low volatile PCI grade coal was shipped under a sales contract to Taiwanese conglomerate Formosa Plastics under a 50:50 marketing joint venture between BCC and Australian trading firm M Resources. BCC plans to boost production at Bluff to 80,000-100,000 t/month by the end of August, which is equivalent to the 1mn-1.2mn t/yr run-of-mine (ROM) rate that the mine is expected to operate at for the next 4-6 years.

BCC uses Australian firm QCoal's washing and rail loading facilities at the 1.2mn t/yr Cook Colliery, which restarted in April having closed in late 2019 when then owner Bounty Mining went into administration.

Bluff is the first stage in BCC's plans to mine 5mn t/yr of coal in Queensland by 2024, which includes the Burton and Lenton coking coal projects that it acquired from Australian coal mine New Hope last week. The deal with New Hope gave BCC 90pc of Burton and Lenton, with Formosa holding the remaining 10pc.

BCC in May began mobilising a contract mining crew at the 1.2mn t/yr Broadmeadow East where it aims to mine 600,000t of ROM coal in 2022, with first coal delivered to the Carborough Downs processing plant this month.

BCC plans to use the Burton infrastructure to develop a hub that can process coal from the Lenton, Broadmeadow East and Hillalong projects, as well as from other third-party coal projects in the region. This underpins BCC's target of more than 5mn t/yr ROM coal by 2024 to produce 3mn-3.8mn t/yr of saleable coal. Burton has reserves of 16mn t, with around 60pc coking coal and 40pc thermal coal.

BCC, which is run by senior executives formerly from Australian coking coal producers Stanmore and Curragh, acquired the Broadmeadow coking and thermal coal project from US energy firm Peabody in June 2020. Stanmore and M Resources have also jointly reopened the 1.2mn t/yr Millnium and Mavis Downs metallurgical coal complex through their MetRes joint venture.

By Jo Clarke

Australian thermal coal prices ($/t)

Australian metallurgical coal prices ($/t)