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Statistics South Africa’s preliminary July mining release, published on 10 September 2026, reports coal production down 7.5% from July 2025. Coal contributed minus 2.0 percentage points to the overall mining production decline of 7.5%. These are national mineral-sector measures, not results for an individual mine.
Coal sales at current prices rose 5.0% year-on-year and contributed plus 1.0 percentage point to the change in total mineral sales. Total mineral sales fell 5.6%. Sales value and production volume measure different things: higher nominal coal sales do not establish higher physical output, and the release does not attribute the difference to a single cause.
Seasonally adjusted total mining production fell 1.9% from June and 5.5% over the three months ending July compared with the preceding three months. Those aggregate comparisons should remain separate from the unadjusted annual coal change. July is the measurement month; September is the release month, rather than a new September production result.