The company says the deal will improve the viability of the mine by helping to pay debts and move around capital to fund ongoing activities, but workers from the Russell Vale colliery who have applied for voluntary redundancies could still be shown the door.

"Definitely - this is about managing the short term - we're burning millions of dollars every month with no revenue. Under the new management, the strategy is to put our capital where we can get a return from it," chief operating officer Dave Stone said.

Earlier this month, Wollongong Coal, formerly Gujarat NRE Coking Coal, had its bid to expand underground operations at Russell Vale blocked by the independent Planning Assessment Commission (PAC).

While the PAC did not reject the expansion outright, it did call for better evidence about its potential impact on the drinking water catchment, which the company said it had now addressed.

There are now 227 people employed at the northern Illawarra site, although Mr Stone was not able to give an answer on how many would lose their jobs.

"When we restructured last year we had 55 redundancies. No redundancies have been enacted at the moment, and everything impinges around Wollongong Coal getting [PAC] approval," he said.

"The PAC have raised some recommendations for review, [and] we've submitted a response to the Department of Planning, and a strategy of how we can meet those recommendations."

The Wollongong Coal proposal includes longwall mining under some of the swampland that flows into Cataract Dam.

Environmentalists predict the mining could cause subsidence, causing creek beds to crack, resulting loss of water.