A NORTH-EAST mining and transport firm supporting Teesside iron and steelmaking says it is on target to meet financial targets.

Hargreaves Services, headquartered in Esh Winning, County Durham, has revealed strong performances in coal trading and increased progress on surface mine operations, including sites in Scotland.

The company supplies coke for SSI UK's Redcar blast furnace and wants to open more open cast sites across the North-East to ease the country's reliance on expensive foreign imports and counter rising energy costs.

Earlier this year, it rescued hundreds of coal jobs after buying assets from collapsed surface mining firm Aardvark for £10.4m, with 237 Scottish workers offered new contracts.

In July, it took over five mines and other assets from Scottish Coal for £8.4m, which collapsed with the loss of 600 jobs, and also launched a successful shares issue to raise £40m to fund the expansion of its opencast operations.

It previously closed its Maltby colliery, in South Yorkshire, and earlier this month revealed the sale of the business and assets of Hatfield Colliery Limited to employee benefit trust Hatfield Colliery Partnership Limited.

A report said: “The group continues to make good progress in surface mining, and while there have been delays re-starting a number of our newly acquired Scottish sites, six are now operating with the prospect of starting on two further sites in the next few weeks.

“The closure at Maltby is on plan and we expect the mine shafts to have been filled and capped by the end of the financial year.

“UK bulk coal operations continue to perform ahead of expectations, benefiting from strong demand from power stations, and volumes are further underpinned by sales of coking coal and pulverised coal injection coal into the steel sector.

“Our UK speciality coal operations are also performing well and continue to successfully mitigate the loss of supplies as a result of the administration of UK Coal.”

The firm will reveal its financial results for the six months to November 30 in February.