Australian miner Riversdale Mining Limited and its partner Indian steel giant Tata Steel Limited have announced an 84 percent increase in coal reserves to 502 million mt for the Benga coal mine in Mozambique as well as an upgrade in coal resources.
Measured coal resources were also increased by 126 percent to 710 million mt, an official statement said, adding that the current measured, indicated and inferred coal resource at the site has increased to 4.03 billion mt.
Benga coal project is a joint venture between Riversdale (65 percent) and Indian steel giant Tata Steel (35 percent) located in Tete, Mozambique.
Tata Steel managing director H M Nerurkar said that the increase in Benga's coal reserves would help the project develop into one of global significance. Riversdale said that tests of Benga's coking coal showed it was of equal quality to the high quality coal from Queensland's Bowen Basin.
As SteelOrbis previously reported the President of the Republic of Mozambique, Armando Emilio Guebuza, attended a formal groundbreaking ceremony at the Benga coal project on April 13 this year.
The companies' statement said that recent tests confirm the quality of the project's hard coking coal products and a study to fast-track development of a 20 million mt per year run of mine. The construction of the stage 1 of the project will be completed in the second half of 2011 with a level of production at 5.3 million mt per year.