Coal and Allied to sell Vickery project to Whitehaven
Wednesday, 21 Oct 2009
Mining Weekly reported that Coal & Allied Industries has entered into an agreement with fellow listed Whitehaven Coal Mining to sell its Vickery coal project in New South Wales for AUD 31,5 million in cash and a 1 156 ha parcel of land in the Gunnedah region.
The Vickery coal project was formerly operated as an open cut thermal coal mine but operations ceased in 1996.
Coal & Allied said in a statement that the completion of the sales transaction was expected before year end but remained subject to customary closing conditions including regulatory approval.
Whitehaven said in a statement that it would be targeting the development of both open cut and underground operations at Vickery. In the near term, the company would focus on the exploration and definition of an open cut area called East Bluevale that was contiguous to Whitehaven’s West Bluevale open cut area, which contains about 4.95 million tonnes of measured indicated and inferred resource. There were nine coal seams contained within the Vickery tenement and Whitehaven stated that 3 of these seams were believed to have economic potential. These seams were thought to be too deep for open cut mining but were expected to be amendable to underground mining methods.
Mr Tony Haggarty MD of Whitehaven said that “Vickery is an important bolt-on acquisition for Whitehaven. It consolidates the company’s significant tenement holding in the Gunnedah region and our expectation is that with focused exploration in the 2010 substantial open cut and underground coal resources will be defined.”
