GVK Hancock welcomes today’s Supreme Court judgement rejecting appeals from anti-mining activists to environmental approvals for the Alpha Coal Project.
In its ruling, the Supreme Court has rejected an appeal to the previous decision of the Land Court, as well as an appeal to the granting of the Environmental Authority for our proposed Alpha coal mine.
This judgement combines the second and third court ruling in favour of our comprehensive suite of environmental assessments for the Alpha Coal Project.
This legal challenge did not involve landholders in the region, it was only brought forward by anti-mining activists.
We are pleased the court has clearly ruled that our project has continued to follow and comply with all regulatory and legal processes.
This is a great day for Queensland as we can now get on with taking the next step towards creating thousands of jobs for the region and State.
The development of the Alpha Coal Project will create 5,000 jobs during around three years of construction and over 2,000 long-term jobs during the 30+ years of operations.
To date, we have invested tens of millions of dollars and thousands of man hours assessing, planning and engaging with communities to reach the point of achieving approvals, which included around 300 collaborative scientific studies, involving over 500 specialist consultants.
As we continue advancing our projects to a point where construction can commence we will continue meeting every regulatory requirement that is asked of us.
The next steps involve continuing to work with Government to meet specific requirements that will allow for the grant of the Mining Lease for the Alpha Coal Project.
Once approvals are finalised we will execute coal offtake agreements with customers and finalise all financing arrangements in preparation for the commencement of construction.
The proposed Alpha coal mine will be a full open cut mine producing 32 million tonnes per annum for 30+ years from a JORC compliant resource of 1.8 billion tonnes, with 1.2 billion tonnes of reserve.
In 2011, 125,000 tonnes of coal was extracted from a test pit on the Alpha Coal Project site and sent for test burns in Asia, which verified the coal quality as containing the high quality attributes that Asian power generators are looking for, including low ash and low sulphur.