Whitehaven Coal secures $600 million loan

Australia’s Whitehaven Coal said on Friday it had secured $600 million in new bank financing to repay part of its existing $1.1 billion acquisition loan tied to its purchase of BHP’s Queensland coal mines, among other debt.

The financing is a senior secured syndicated facility comprising a $475 million term loan and a $125 million revolving credit facility, the company said.

In 2023, Whitehaven announced it would acquire BHP’s Blackwater and Daunia mines, which are a part of the BHP Mitsubishi Alliance (BMA) metallurgical coal joint venture in Queensland, for $4.1 billion.

“The successful execution of the new senior secured syndicated facility, with a headline rate of around 6%, further strengthens our funding flexibility, extends our maturity profile, materially reduces our funding cost and improves our weighted average cost of capital,” managing director and CEO Paul Flynn said.

(By Sneha Kumar; Editing by Sumana Nandy)