About 170 community members turned out at Denman Memorial Hall on Thursday evening, March 31, to hear from representatives of the Ferndale Exploration Project.

The project is part of a joint venture by mining companies Coalworks and the Nathan Tinkler-founded Boardwalk Resources.

Boardwalk Resources chairman Ian Craig said the joint venture had concerns about holding the public meeting because the project was in its early stages.

“The concern is we may not be able to answer some questions you may have,” he said.

Up to $25 million will be spent to provide a pre-feasibility study into open cut and underground mining at Ferndale.

Stage one exploration drilling finished in February, with seven holes drilled at various points on the 3742-hectare lease area.

Exploration manager and geologist Matt Morgan said early results were encouraging and had identified the shallow Newcastle coal seam and the deeper Whittingham seam.

Stage two drilling started last month and is expected to take about eight weeks to complete.

“At the end of this year we’ll have a fairly good idea of where the project is going and we’ll have ongoing community consultation as we go,” Mr Morgan said.

The Coalworks website has identified a resource target of up to 300 million tonnes of “high quality export coking and thermal coal”, with an initial production target of between two and five million tonnes a year.

A plan on the website indicates if the mine goes ahead, its first shipment of coal could be as early as 2016.

The representatives said the plan was “purely a target” and part of reporting requirements for shareholders.

“While we’re being very cautious in saying it is early days, Boardwalk wouldn’t commit $25 million to a project if we didn’t have some expectation of success,” Mr Craig said.