Eight new border gates specifically designed to allow the transportation of coal from Mongolia into China have been opened at the Shivee Khuren-Ceke border crossing, according to The ASIA Miner. SouthGobi Resources said the new crossings create a significant increase in capacity, with simultaneous access to a number of gates for export traffic.
The eight new gates will be operated from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. six days per week, which is a major improvement to the previous border crossing system. All coal previously transported out of Mongolia through the Shivee Khuren-Ceke crossing had to go through a single gate with empty trucks usually admitted into Mongolia in the mornings and loaded trucks exporting to China in the afternoon.
SouthGobi’s President Alexander Molyneux said, “Our daily transportation record for the old border infrastructure was actually achieved recently at 409 trucks—which crossed from Mongolia to China carrying about 37,000 metric tons (mt) of coal. We believe the new infrastructure will eliminate the ‘bottleneck’ at the border for quite some time. The expanded border crossing should also reduce transportation costs because of more efficient truck utilization for the transport companies.”
SouthGobi also recently announced massive resources and reserves increases at its flagship Ovoot Tolgoi coal complex in southern Mongolia, with an updated NI 43-101 measured and indicated resource of 302.3 million mt.
The Ovoot Tolgoi coal complex is spread across two separate resource areas known as the Sunrise and Sunset fields, 320 km southwest of the provincial capital and about 40 km north of the China-Mongolia border, making it the closest Mongolian coal resource to China.
