Coal Services

SRK has extensive consulting experience within the global coal industry, in both established producing countries and emerging markets. SRK’s experience covers both underground and opencast coal mining, for both hard coal and brown coal/lignite. SRK has delivered a wide range of projects, from grassroots exploration, through project development, prefeasibility and feasibility studies, to implementation and operational support. SRK’s global reach has delivered world class advice and support in all of the top ten coal producing countries of the world, notably Russia, Colombia, India, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, China and South Africa. SRK also has many years of experience in and still actively consults to the UK coal business. SRK’s key areas of expertise in the coal sector are:

• project valuation;
• technical auditing and due diligence;
• exploration targeting and exploration programme planning;
• regional and structural geological interpretation;
• geological modelling using various software packages and geostatistical studies;
• coal resource definition and classification;
• mining method selection and options studies for opencast versus underground;
• opencast and underground mine design, planning and scheduling;
• assessment of Coal Reserves to international standards and relating to the technical and economic assessment of the life of mine plan;
• equipment selection, optimisation studies and audits;
• coal processing technologies and product market assessments;
• infrastructure and logistics planning;
• environmental and social impact assessments;
• health and safety assessment;
• geotechnical assessments of open pits and underground stability, including Geotechnical Assessments in the UK for the Quarries Regulations 1999;
• hydrogeology and hydrology, including acid mine water remediation;
• tailings assessments; and
• operational assistance and productivity analysis.

SRK’s coal due diligence team has a world class portfolio of projects relating to audits for acquistions, sales, investments and listings on the main stock exchanges, having carried out Mineral Experts Reports, NI 43-101 reports with resource and reserve reporting under international codes such as JORC and SAMREC.

As a global consultant to the coal industry SRK has a large group of internationally recognised and experienced coal experts that are located around the globe. This network is supported by local assistance from the numerous SRK offices and from the wider SRK group expertise in all fields. We have the ability to mobilise a number of multidiscipline teams on a single project and to provide experts who have worked at all levels of operating coal companies for many years prior to working as consultants.