AUSTRALIAN COAL

Press, Volume C, Issue 29516, 18 May 1961, Page 13

AUSTRALIAN COAL

Japanese Contract

(N.Z Press Assn.—Copyright) BRISBANE, May 17. Japanese coal-buying and steel companies have promised finance to develop a Queensland coalfield from which coal worth £A8,000,000 will be exported to Japan, in the next four years. The managing director of an Australian development company, Mr L. C. Thiess, announced that contract yesterday after talks in Japan His company. Thiess Brothers, would export to Japan 500.000 tons annually for four years, he said. The quantity would be increased considerably when the company built a railway line from the field—Kianganoura in Central Queensland—to Gladstone, 330 miles north of Brisbane, he said.

The line was likely to be finished about 1965.

Mr Thiess said Japan's powerful Mitsui Bussan Kaisha. Ltd., had contracted to buy the coal. A joint company—Thiess Brothers and Mitsui interests—planned the £A8.000,000 railway from the field to Gladstone.

Final railway plan arrangements would be made. Mr Thiess said, after a visit to Australia in June by experts representing the Japanese companies with whom he dealt. They are expected to arrive in Queensland on June 9.