Bowen Coking Coal (ASX:BCB) appoints BUMA Australia to mine Broadmeadow East

• Bowen Coking Coal (BCB) appoints BUMA Australia to provide mining services to its Broadmeadow East mine (BME) in Queensland
• The appointment comes with a three year contract, with the option to extend for a further year at Bowen’s election to operate the BME mine using their own resources
• The contract also makes provision for the seamless transition into the Burton mine at already agreed rates and production volumes
• First phase mobilisation of site infrastructure, ancillary equipment, haul tucks and a EX3600 excavator are underway and site work is expected to begin in the next two weeks
• BCB shares are up 1.59 per cent, trading at 32 cents

Bowen Coking Coal (BCB) has appointed BUMA Australia to provide mining services to its Broadmeadow East mine (BME) in Queensland.

The Broadmeadow East Project was acquired from Peabody Energy in June 2020 for $1 million plus a royalty of $1 per tonne for the first 1.5 million tonnes sold.

The appointment comes with a three year contract, with the option to extend for a further year at Bowen’s election to operate the BME mine using their own resources.

The contract also makes provision for the seamless transition into the Burton mine at already agreed rates and production volumes which the company intends to trigger immediately on completion of the Burton transaction.

The project hosts a 33 million tonnes resource and was initially planned to be mined through conventional truck and shovel open cut mining at a rate of between 800,000 tonnes and one million tonnes per annum over a period of between five to seven years.

“BME is a critical building block in Bowen’s plans to become Australia’s next significant independent coking coal producer,” CEO and Managing Director Gerhard Redelinghuys said.

“Bringing BME into production diversifies the Bowen production base and will be the first of a number of our metallurgical coal projects to be exported from the world class Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal.”

First phase mobilisation of site infrastructure, ancillary equipment, haul tucks and a
EX3600 excavator are underway and site work is expected to commence within the next two weeks.

The recent increase in crude oil prices, coupled with increased labour cost is expected to result in a 10 to 15 per cent increase in the production costs.

However, the increase in the planned production cost is not considered to materially impact the short to medium term margins in this higher sales price environment.

BCB shares were up 1.59 per cent, trading at 32 cents as of 2:14 pm AEST.