Peabody-Winsway Resources B.V.

Peabody-Winsway Resources B.V. is a 50:50 joint venture between Peabody Energy and the Hong Kong-listed company Winsway which aims to develop coal projects in Mongolia. Winsway specialises in importing Mongolian coking coal into China for use in the steel industry.

Background to the Joint Venture
In January 2009 Peabody Energy announced that it had "obtained an option to purchase up to a 50 percent interest in a joint venture holding Polo Resources Limited's coal and mineral interests in Mongolia." Polo's Polo's Mongolian coal interests, Peabody stated, "have potential resources of over 1 billion tonnes, with a majority of its coal licenses located in the South Gobi coal region." Peabody's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Gregory H. Boyce stated in a media release that "a joint venture with Polo's existing platform will accelerate the development of Peabody's presence in one of the world's premier undeveloped coal regions." Two months later Peabody announced that in return for $25.8 million Polo had entered into a renegotiated agreement for a 50:50 joint venture. Peabody also softened its claims about Polo's potential coal resources by claiming only that their tenements "could include up to 1 billion tonnes of potential resources, subject to exploratory drilling." In early May that year, on completion of the joint venture agreement, Peabody softened its claims about potential coal resources even further claiming only that "the joint venture holds coal licenses throughout Mongolia, with a significant number of licenses in the South Gobi region" and that "Mongolia has substantial metallurgical and thermal coal resources that are strategically located to serve high-demand China and Asia markets."

In 2010 Polo's share in the joint venture was bought by Winsway Coking Coal Holdings Ltd. (Winsway) and the joint venture re-named the Peabody-Winsway Resources B.V. In its 2010 annual report Peabody stated that the joint venture "is in the development stage and plans to ship metallurgical and thermal coal to Asian markets once developed." Winsway, it stated, "is one of the leading suppliers in China of imported high-quality coking coal. It distributes and transports coal from Mongolia and other countries into China through its integrated service platform which includes logistics parks, coal washing plants, and road and railway transportation capabilities along the coast, rivers and inland borders of China, including Inner Mongolia."

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