London (Platts)--25Apr2012/907 am EDT/1307 GMT

Coal of Africa Limited (CoAL) has loaded the first 1,500 mt thermal coal shipment from its Vele Colliery in South Africa's Limpopo province for the Matola Terminal in Maputo, Mozambique to be shipped and sold to Asian markets, the miner said Wednesday.

It said the coal was produced as part of the plant product test work it is conducting on Vele's thermal and metallurgical coal and it was loaded into 30 rail wagons at the existing Musina siding on Tuesday.

"A key objective of this test train run is to determine axle load capacity of the Transnet Freight Services (TFR) line between Groenbult and Hoedspruit. The test run is expected to confirm TFR's capacity to commence regular, weekly trains from this existing siding and on the existing line," CoAL said in a statement.

Project engineering consultants ELB Engineering Services also officially delivered the plant to Vele mine management Tuesday.

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Production at Vele restarted in December 2011, with wet commissioning of the plant completed in December and hot commissioning in February.

CoAL added that it is carrying out further test work to confirm the design of processing infrastructure to enable the recovery of additional coking coal from the slimes portion of the coal and to produce a secondary thermal product.

In the first phase of production, Vele is expected to produce about 2.7 million mt/year run-of-mine production, yielding an estimated 1 million mt/year of saleable coking coal.

The project has experienced a number of issues throughout its development. CoAL halted all major construction activities at Vele -- which was meant to start production in Q3 2010 -- in August 2010 to comply with a South African Department of Environmental Affairs order after the department said it had not met environmental legislation criteria.

The miner in April last year said that the Department of Water Affairs had granted its integrated water use license (IWUL), although this was also suspended by the country's Water Tribunal in July.

The miner restarted construction work at the colliery last August after receiving environmental authorization in July, while the IWUL suspension was lifted during Q3 2011, allowing CoAL to continue construction of the mine and plant.

--Jacqueline Holman, jacqueline_holman@platts.com

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