Tweefontein Coal Mine

This article is part of the Global Coal Mine Tracker, a project of Global Energy Monitor.

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Tweefontein Coal Mine is an operating coal mine in Nkangala, Mpumalanga, South Africa.

Location

Table 1: Project-level location details

Mine Name	Location	Coordinates (WGS 84)
Tweefontein Coal Mine	Nkangala, Mpumalanga, South Africa	-26.0383942, 29.1613318 (exact)

The map below shows the exact location of the coal mine:

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Project Details

Table 2: Project status

Status	Status Detail	Opening Year	Closing Year
Operating	–	–	–

Table 3: Operation details

Note: The asterisk (*) signifies that the value is a GEM estimated figure.

Capacity (Mtpa)	Production (Mtpa)	Year of Production	Mine Type	Mining Method	Mine Size (km2)	Mine Depth (m)	Workforce Size
–	8.9	2024	Underground & Surface	Mixed	–	60*	750

Table 4: Coal resources and destination

Total Reserves (Mt)	Year of Total Reserves Recorded	Total Resources (Mt)	Coalfield	Coal Type	Coal Grade	Primary Consumer/ Destination
134	2024	810	Witbank	Bituminous	Thermal	–

Table 5: Ownership and parent company

Note: To access more comprehensive data on energy ownership, please visit the Global Energy Ownership Tracker.

Owner	Parent Company	Headquarters
Glencore Holdings South Africa Pty Ltd [100.0%]	Glencore PLC [79.8%]; African Rainbow Minerals Ltd [20.2%]	Switzerland, South Africa

Table 6: Historical production (unit: million tonnes per annum)

ROM or Saleable	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025
ROM	–	12.6	13.4	12.3	10	9.6	9.4	8.9	–

Note: The above sections were automatically generated and are based on data from the Global Coal Mine Tracker August 2026 release.

Ownership Tree

This ownership tree is part of the Global Energy Ownership Tracker, a project of Global Energy Monitor.

Background

Tweefontein Complex is a group of operating surface and underground coal mines jointly owned by Glencore and African Rainbow Minerals (ARM), near Emalahleni, in Mpumalanga, South Africa.

The complex includes the Tweefontein North and Tweefontein South mine sites, of which only the Tweefontein North branch is currently being mined.

The Tweefontein mine began operating "at the turn of the last century."

Tweefontein North

The Tweefontein North development includes five coal seams, with all except seam No. 3 contributing to the coal resources. Coal reserves at the mine can be extracted by both opencast truck-and-shovel or dragline, and underground bord-and-pillar mining methods, and are sufficient to support a mine life of 11 years (until 2036). Since at least financial year 2018, coal production at Tweefontein has steadily declined.

Tweefontein South

No mining has been conducted at the Tweefontein South development since at least 2018. Its coal Reserves are sufficient to support a mine life of 10 years.

Expansion

In 2014, the Tweefontein Optimization Project was undertaken, which "delivered a low-cost, long-life brownfield expansion that elevated Tweefontein into a modern, predominantly opencast operation that mines the rich pillar reserves that were left behind in discontinued underground workings.

Renewable Energy Project

In 2023, Glencore implemented a pilot solar plant at the Tweefontein colliery. The solar plant, which had its first full year of operation in 2024, has helped to reduce scope 2 emissions at the coal processing facility.

Methane Plumes Detected Nearby

Global Energy Monitor researchers analyze satellite-detected methane plumes in order to determine whether they have been observed at or near the site of GEM energy assets. The satellite data provider creates imagery of individual methane plumes and estimates their emission rates at the time of observation. GEM has reviewed many of these plume detections against Google Earth imagery and GEM’s own energy infrastructure tracker data. The following table lists methane plumes which are associated with the energy asset or facility based on distance and manual review. (A full description of the analysis process is available in the Global Methane Emitters Tracker methodology wiki page.)

Table M1: Plume details

For additional details on this individual plume identification and others, see the Global Methane Emitters Tracker.

Observation date	Satellite data provider	Location of plume origin	Methane emissions rate	Additional plume information
2024-10-19T08:28:45+00	CarbonMapper, tan20241019t082845c00s4001-M	-26.0267, 29.17216	498.3321 kg/hr	Mpumalanga Province Methane Observation 2024-10-19, 3
2024-10-19T08:28:45+00	CarbonMapper, tan20241019t082845c00s4001-N	-26.0313, 29.18126	682.3776 kg/hr	Mpumalanga Province Methane Observation 2024-10-19, 4
2025-01-27T08:43:05+00	CarbonMapper, tan20250127t084305c00s4001-B	-26.0218, 29.16174	2036.866 kg/hr	Mpumalanga Province Methane Observation 2025-01-27, 1

Articles and Resources

Additional data

To access additional data, including an interactive map of world coal mines, a downloadable dataset, and summary data, please visit the Global Coal Mine Tracker on the Global Energy Monitor website.