Coalspur Mines Limited Appoints Vice President, Operations to Lead Vista
Alberta, Canada (ABN Newswire) - Coalspur Mines Limited (ASX:CPL) (TSE:CPT) is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Richard Tremblay to the position of Vice President, Operations ('VP, Operations').
Mr. Tremblay has 22 years of experience in the industry and joins Coalspur from Teck Coal where he was most recently General Manager Business Improvement - Mining and Processing. For the previous six years he was the General Manager at Teck Coal's Fording River operation located in British Columbia, Canada. The Fording River operation is the largest metallurgical coal mine in Canada with over 1,200 employees and a capacity to produce up to 10 million metric tonnes of metallurgical clean coal for sale to steel mills around the world.
Mr. Tremblay, who will be based in the company's Hinton office, will be responsible for preparing the Vista Coal Project ('Vista') for commissioning and running the mine once it is operational. Mr Tremblay will have overall responsibility for the safety and effectiveness of the operations, all environmental and health matters, production control and staff functions at Vista. Mr. Tremblay has diverse and extensive management experience in open pit coal mining and a proven track record of achieving operational targets. Mr. Tremblay has also been recognized twice as operating the open pit mine in the province of British Columbia with the lowest lost time incident frequency (2009 John Ash Award - Fording River Operation, 2005 Edward Prior Award - Line Creek Operation).
Mr. Tremblay holds a Masters of Business Administration from Simon Fraser University and is a professional engineer with a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Queen's University.
President and CEO, Gill Winckler said 'Richard is ideally placed to step into the VP, Operations role and we are extremely pleased that he has joined the Coalspur team. Richard's hands-on operational expertise, strong leadership skills and considerable coal mining experience will be invaluable as we move forward with the development of Vista.'
'Coalspur is proud to have attracted someone of Richard's calibre to enhance the technical and operational capabilities of our team. Richard joins us at an exciting stage in the Company's transition as it prepares to commence construction on Vista.'
Richard said, 'I am thrilled to be joining the Coalspur executive management team and look forward to the responsibility of taking Vista into production'
About Coalspur Mines Limited:
Coalspur Mines Limited (ASX:CPL) (TSE:CPT) is a coal exploration and development company with approximately 55,000 hectares of coal leases located within the Hinton region of Alberta, Canada. Coalspur’s flagship coal project is the Vista Coal Project (“Vista”) which has the potential to be the largest export thermal coal mine in Canada.
Vista covers approximately 10,000 hectares and provides a large scale, surface mineable, thermal coal project. Vista has the advantage of leveraging off established first world infrastructure with CN Rail’s main line, located adjacent to Vista, which is substantially underutilised and provides a rail line suitable for the transport of coal to deepwater ports on Canada’s west coast. Coalspur has also secured a port allocation agreement with Ridley Terminals Inc. which is essential to the logistics supply chain necessary to export coal from Vista to the growing demand from the Asia Pacific Rim countries, including China, Japan and Korea.
A feasibility study was completed on Vista in January 2012, which defined a two phased approach to project development. Detailed engineering has commenced and is scheduled for completion in early 2013. Phase 1 envisages production of 5.0Mtpa at a capital cost of approximately C$870 million. Phase 2 will increase production by a further 7.0Mtpa and will utilize free cash flow from Phase 1 to fund the estimated additional development costs of approximately C$373 million. The Vista mine plan defines a 28 year mine life with forecast annual production capacity of 12.0Mtpa. Marketable Coal Reserves on Vista are 313Mt from a Recoverable Coal Reserve of approximately 566Mt.
Coalspur has offices in Calgary and Hinton in Canada as well as in Australia. The Company is dual listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (“TSX”) under the symbol 'CPT' and on the Australian Securities Exchange ('ASX') under the symbol 'CPL'.
Contact:
Coalspur Mines Limited
T: +1-403-261-9971
WWW: www.coalspur.com