Mount Thorley CL0219

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This is coal lease CL0219 which is for the Mount Thorley Coal Mine, part of the Mount Thorley Warkworth complex, a combined operation of 2 open cut mining operations, Mount Thorley and Warkworth. It is owned by Coal & Allied Industries Limited with 80% and Posco Australia Pty Ltd with 20%. Coal & Allied is owned by Rio Tinto and Mitsubishi and manages the operations. The lease was granted September 23, 1981 with an expiry date of September 23, 2023. The approximate area is 1992 hectares and the lease falls under Act year 1973.

The mine began operation in 1981 and Coal & Allied became managers of the mine in 1989. It is an open cut operation using draglines and shovels to expose and mine thermal and semi-soft coking coal from the Wittingham Coal Measures.

The mine is capable of producing up to 2.3 million tonnes of thermal coal, and 1.8 million tonnes of semi-coking coal per year. At the end 2013 economic reserves were 21 million tonnes. After being prepared the coal is loaded onto trains and shipped to the Port Waratah Coal Terminal in Newcastle.

In 2015 the Mount Thorley Warkworth mining extension proposal was approved, allowing the extraction of the remaining reserves of 230 million tonnes between both mines to be mined at a rate of 18Mt per year, for 21 years.