On January 28, Peabody Energy (Peabody), the world's largest private sector coal company based in St. Louis, Missouri, US, approved the upgrade and expansion of the Metropolitan Mine, which produces metallurgical coal in New South Wales, Australia.
A company press release said that the expansion is expected to increase capacity by 1 million mt within several years, adding that the capital investments for the expansion are expected to total $70 million, of which approximately $15 million is targeted for 2010.
Peabody has multiple Australian expansion projects targeted at raising the company's metallurgical coal shipments to 15 million mt per year by 2014. In 2009, Metropolitan shipped 1.5 million mt of mostly hard coking coal for export to Asian steel producers.
Peabody Energy's total 2009 sales reached 244 million mt in volume and $6 billion in revenues.