Austar Coal Mine is an underground mine located in Hunter Valley, New South Wales, Australia, about 160km north of Sydney and 60km west of New Castle, and is accessible by railway.Sounland Coal Mine, the predecessor of Austar, was shut down due to coal combustion at work face on December 24, 2003.

Austar Coal Mine covers an area of 63 square kilometres, with geological reserves of 140 million tonnes and 50 million tonnes of recoverable coal reserves. The thickness of the main coal seam of Austar Coal Mine is 4.5-7.5 meters with an angle of 4 degrees and 450-700 metres of depth.The coal produced in Austar is low ash high calorific value bituminous coal with 8000Kcal/kg calorific value, which can be used as metallurgical coal. The coal has its own preparation plant and railway, and owns a piece of land of 1600 hecters. The preliminary future reserves in Austar are 200 million tons.

After one year preparation, Ausatr held a ceremony to celebrate its commencement of production and the successful launch of the first LTCC face in Australia. As of December 31, 2008, Austar had produced 3.9 million tons of raw coal in total.

Yancoal Australia, based on the safety operation of Austar and its LTCC technology advantage, endeavors to promote the application of LTCC to increase the recovery rate of resources, and to realize development via capital operation. This is helpful to facilitate Yanzhou to export mining technology and enable China coal industry to export mining equipment, to further improve Yanzhou’s brand and image in the market and to promote Yanzhou’s internationalization.