Our Business
Dragline - Blackwater Mine
BMA produces over 58 million tonnes of coal annually, comprising high quality hard coking coals, weak coking coal, PCI coals and thermal coals which are sold to over 93 customers in 23 countries.
Our operations involve a complex sequence of activities beginning at the mines and extending to the Hay Point Terminal where sophisticated coal quality tracking and blending takes place to produce final products.
BMA is predominantly an open cut coal miner. Open cut operations account for more than 90% of current production and will dominate our mining methods for decades to come, although new underground operations are part of our future growth plans.
The majority of our mines are located on the western edge of the Bowen Basin, and progressively mine in a west to east direction.
Open cut mining methods use truck/shovel fleets and draglines for overburden removal. Coal seams are mined by frontend loaders or hydraulic excavators, and coal is transported to mine preparation plants by large capacity haul trucks. Underground operations extract coal using continuous longwall and punch longwall methods. The coal is then moved to the preparation plants by conveyors and large capacity haul trucks.
Raw coal is washed and treated in minesite coal preparation plants to produce a range of products which meet customers quality spectifications. The plants separate coal by size for subsquent processing through coarse and fine circuits to produce a wide range of hard coking, weak coking, PCI and thermal coal products. A number of different separation technologies are utilised within the coal preparation plants including cyclones, bed separators and spirals.