Nippon Steel Eyes Earlier Start of Revuboe Mine Project

Nippon Steel tries to start development of new coking coal mine, Revuboe in Mozambique as early as in the year while the project start was planned in first half of 2012 originally. The project would start first shipment as early as in 2014 after 2-3 years of construction. Vale of Brazil will start first coking coal shipment from Mozambique in the year. With various new coking coal projects, Mozambique is expected to be major coking coal source with potential 50-80 million tonnes per year of supply in future. The new source would contribute to stable seaborne trade market along with Mongolia and Russia while Australia now represents more than half of the supply.

Revuboe project finishes feasibility study in the year and gets mining right to start US$ 6-7 development. The project will build coal handling and preparation plant and 20 kilometers of access rail to existing railway along with mining machines.

The deposit is estimated to be more than 1 billion tonnes including thermal coal, in which the project can operate open cut mining for around 560 million tonnes. The project already has mining plan to produce annual 5 million tonnes of premium coking coal at peak in the 25 years operation.

Nippon Steel got 23.3% interest in the project last year to develop through joint venture, in which Australian Talbot Group has 58.9% interest, Nippon Steel Trading has 10% interest and POSCO of South Korea has 7.8% interest. The project already builds camp building for the development and started negotiation for rail and port availability.

Nippon Steel sees infrastructure development is the key for Mozambique to grow major coking coal source in the international market. The infrastructure development includes Beira port expansion including additional rail transport capacity and connection rail project from the mine site to deepwater Nacala port via Malawi. Nippon Steel will send mission in the year to encourage Mozambique government and infrastructure public corporation to develop the infrastructure timely.