Bathurst hunkers down as coking coal price keeps sinking

Bathurst hunkers down as coking coal price keeps sinking
By Pattrick Smellie Feb. 25 (BusinessDesk) – Coal miner Bathurst Resources is making 29 staff redundant as it hunkers down to ride out the lowest world prices for coking coal in the last nine years, and signals a delayed start to its controversial Escarpment open-cut mine on the Denniston Plateau, above Westport. Bathurst overcame a string of appeals to gain resource consents for Escarpment last October, more than two years after winning initial consents, but watched global prices for coking coal, used in steel-making, fall over that time fr...