Coal miner earmarks 4.8b yuan to spend on building and restoring facilities at home and abroad
Yanzhou Coal Mining plans to almost quadruple its capital expenditure this year to build new production capacity domestically and abroad, as it shrugs off the output-cutting impact of problematic village resettlement at home.
The Shandong province-based coal miner planned 4.81 billion of expenditure this year, up from 1.29 billion yuan last year, chief financial officer Wu Yuxiang said yesterday.
It has set aside 1.26 billion yuan for plant and equipment on its existing six mines, 1.51 billion yuan for restoration of the Austar mine in Queensland, Australia, 1.35 billion yuan for a new coal mine and a methanol plant in Shaanxi province and 690 million yuan for the Zhaolou mine in Shandong.
The Austar mine, of which Yanzhou bought a 90 per cent stake in late 2004, is expected to come on stream in July or August with two to three million tonnes of annual capacity.
The Shaanxi mine would have initial annual capacity of eight million tonnes, expandable to 20 million tonnes in three to five years, Mr Wu said.
Yanzhou expects to complete negotiations on the stake it will own in this mine by May or June. It agreed to invest in the mine - estimated to have 1.24 billion tonnes of recoverable reserves - in July 2004.