The Australian listed coal mining company Universal Coal plc (UC) started its underground production at the New Clydesdale Colliery (NCC) in September this year. NCC is located about 30 km South of Emalahleni in the Witbank coal area of South Africa’s Mpumalanga province. The South African focused coal mining company acquired NCC from Exxaro in 2014. UC’s Roodekop open cast operation is situated contiguous in the South of the NCC premises so that both operations now benefit from synergies.

UC announced that during the first phase of operations taking place in the Diepspruit underground area, NCC has a production target of
900,000 t/y ROM of export quality thermal coal. UC awarded a mining operation contract for New Clydesdale to the Ermelo based mining contractor STA Coal Mining Company (Pty) Ltd. (STA). STA started operations over 10 years ago with an Eickhoff Continuous Miner (CM). Interestingly, this CM is still cutting coal in a mine near Piet Retief. STA focuses on offering quality coal extraction services by using advanced
technology and by focusing their operations to achieve this goal. Their coal extraction services are diversified enabling them to deal with the challenges that various seam heights and geological conditions offer.

Upon the expansion of their operations through UC’s NCC operations, STA now invested in another Eickhoff CM2H-30 CM that is capable of mining between 1.5 to 3 m. “This strong and robust CM will support the production targets that STA must achieve and has started production during the third week of September 2016. Eickhoff is proud to support STA in South Africa. Eickhoff’s local Subsidiary ensures services of highest standards by focusing on parts availability and supply, maintenance support, training, repair and rebuild strategies and the execution thereof, condition monitoring and by forging strong relationships with STA and other customers. The South African team backed by the German mother company is 100% committed to support STA and Universal Coal with the opening of the NCC operations.”