Glencore's $US2.55 billion bid for Rio Tinto's Hunter Valley assets has turned the spotlight on which assets the Swiss miner might have to sell to keep its debt under control.
The Tahmoor coking coal mine in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales could be one of the first to go, with Standard Chartered Bank mandated by Glencore to run a sale process.
Prospective acquirers have been asked to sign confidentiality agreements with an information memorandum set to land in the coming weeks.
According to a sale flier obtained by Street Talk, Tahmoor is an "established and well understood underground longwall mining operation" which offers a "large JORC resource with the current mine plan to extend beyond 2030."
The auction also includes Tahmoor's share in Port Kembla with potential buyers to get right of access to its coal export terminal. Glencore owns the Tahmoor assets in their entirety
South32 would be a logical suitor for Tahmoor, which produced 2 million tonnes of hard coking coal in fiscal 2016 plus 45,000 tonnes of thermal coal, given the proximity of its Illawarra coal assets.
Glencore's sale flier for Tahmoor talks up the potential to mine the Wongawilli seam within the existing Tahmoor tenements, and the potential to achieve "blending synergies" by combining coking coals from the Wongawilli seam with the nearby Bulli seam.
South32 mines the bulli seam at its Appin operations, which are just a few short kilometres to the north east of Tahmoor.
South32 has been acquisitive for coal in recent times, but had to abandon its bid to buy Peabody's Metropolitan mine in April after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) raised concerns that South32's increased dominance in the region could have led to increased coal prices for BlueScope Steel.
Tahmoor could also be an attractive option for Korean steel giant POSCO, which is planning to build its new greenfields Hume Coal coking coal mine 46 kilometres south of Tahmoor near Berrima.
With community activists fiercely opposing Hume Coal, POSCO may well find Tahmoor to be a simpler, cheaper and quicker option.
With Glencore's focus on thermal coal, it is also expected the Swiss miner may seek to liquidate some of its lesser coking coal mines in Queensland, including the Newlands and Collinsville mines, which were either struggling or closed prior to the rally in coking coal prices last year.
