The miner is Australia’s biggest listed coal company and its majority shareholders, Rio Tinto, with 70 per cent, and Mitsubishi, want to buy the 14 per cent of Coal & Allied shares that they don’t already own.

Coal & Allied employs 3200 people and owns all of the Hunter Valley Operations mine, 64 per cent of Warkworth and 40 per cent of Bengalla. It also owns 100 per cent of the Mount Pleasant proposal, due to start in 2014.

Coal & Allied’s share of production from the three mines should top 24million tonnes next year, rising to 38million tonnes with Mount Pleasant included.

Stockmarket analyst Gavin Wendt of Minelife said yesterday that Coal & Allied had been managed by Rio Tinto for years and while shareholders would pocket the money from the takeover, nothing would change for the company’s 3200 employees.

The takeover has been approved by the Foreign Investment Review Board and goes to a vote of shareholders on November 28.

Rio and Mitsubishi are offering $125 a share, well above the $91 the stock was trading at when the deal was announced in August.

After years of trading at less than $30 a share, Coal & Allied rose dramatically between 2006 and 2008, hitting $120 before falling back to about $75 during the global financial crisis.

An expert’s report on the bid published this week said Coal & Allied’s mines had a ‘‘high cash generating capacity’’.

Costs varied from mine to mine, but the company-wide operating cost was $51.50 for a saleable tonne of coal. Semi-soft coking coal for steelmaking was bringing $200 a tonne and thermal coal for power stations $130, although prices were expected to fall slowly over time.

Coal & Allied said the coal industry was facing labour shortages and wanted to ‘‘recruit from outside the existing labour pool within the Hunter Valley to assist with cultural change and improved productivity’’.

It was also facing community pressure over environmental factors.

Mr Wendt said Rio was taking advantage of the ‘‘negative sentiment’’ in the market to convince long-term shareholders to sell.

He said the delisting of Coal & Allied from the stock exchange would probably mean less information in the public sphere about the operation of the mines involved.