Throughout the meeting representatives of Manildra, an Australian-owned agricultural manufacturing businesses, reiterated its motives in entering the mining industry to secure a cheaper source of thermal energy for their Shoalhaven starch plant, which uses nut coal for drying, distilling and evaporating purposes. 

The extension is only for eight years, are you looking expand the mine life further into the future?

BM: We’ll explore all options beyond that eight years, we don’t have a firm plan at this stage beyond that time frame. We operate in communities for over 60 years.So we’re not short term people in the industry, we would be looking to involve ourselves in the community and within the industry for a significant amount of time in order to prolong the solution that we have in place not only for Cullen Bullen but for our Shoalhaven starches plant.

Castlereagh Coal has mining exploration licenses on more than 1000 hectares of land in the area would you consider expanding the mined area in the future if you do find a lucrative source of coal?

BM: Those exploration licenses were inherited with the acquisition from Coalpac. Some of those exploration licenses unfortunately lapsed and were renewed throughout our ownership tenure. There has been no additional exploration licenses applied for beyond what was acquired with from the Coalpac leases. But like I said we would explore all options. This is certainly a very important step in terms of us having an operation in the community and in the area, without that we don’t have a presence. We can’t really explore beyond the scope of this at this stage.

Would you prioritise employing locals?

BM: Absolutely. 

What percentage of the coal you mine will be nut coal?

BM: It’s quite a small percentage. Nut coal is very hard to source and it is a very boutique coal product, which contributes to the problem we have at Shoalhaven in terms of being able to source the coal and source it at an economic price. That  coal needs to be sourced at a good price in order to be remain competitive on an international scale. We are competing with other countries whose energy costs are a fraction of ours.

The nut coal, whilst it is a small percentage of the over all product, the use of coal at Shoalhaven is quite small in coal mining terms so this project is scaled perfectly to suit our needs.

What will you do with the remainder of the coal?

BM: We have consulted with the local power station in terms of that off take, that’s the logical outcome in terms of that coal. At this stage there is no formal agreement in terms of that but certainly that’s a logical step.

Will you continue to purchase nut coal? (Manildra currently purchases nut coal from Clarence Colliery and Whitehaven in Narrabri). 

BM: Look, it’s entirely possible. On the basis we have a solution in place with this mine it’s entirely possible we incorporate our own coal into our current supplier’s coal into a product mix that can sustain our operation for a longer period of time.