KTK to boost coal production 8% to 17 mln tonnes in 2019
KEMEROVO. April 17 (Interfax) - PJSC Kuzbasskaya Toplivnaya Company (KTK) plans to mine 17 million tonnes of coal in 2019, 8% more than in 2018, materials from the Kemerovo Region's coal industry department show.
The company produced 15.66 million tonnes of coal in 2018.
KTK chief executive Eduard Alekseyenko told reporters on Wednesday that the production plans for this year were made in a more favourable market environment than now, but they have not been revised yet.
"We planned when the market was fairly high - 17 million tonnes production and 15 million tonnes processing. But despite [the current] drop, we're staying with these plans. We hope that the market will see an upturn," Alekseyenko said.
The company is expected to reduce investment in modernization by 5% to 2.85 billion rubles in 2019, of which 1.06 billion rubles will go toward the acquisition of mining and transport equipment.
Most of the investment will go into development of production and railway infrastructure, including exits from open-pit mines to the Meret station, Alekseyenko said. This year the company is completing another track, 6km from Dunayevskaya to the Fadeyevsky block post. "Right now there is a [Kuzbassrazrezugol ] single track there, we're adding our own so we can ship out coal," he said.
"And the main project that we've gotten ready is the construction of the Kaskad washing plant with processing capacity of 5 million tonnes. We are now designing it and plan to begin active construction next year," Alekseyenko said.
He also said that KTK and Russian Railways (RZD) plan to carry out a project together in Kaliningrad Region to transfer coal to European-gauge freight cars. "We plan to put sorting systems there so as to carry out the transfer on the territory of Kaliningrad Region, not Poland. RZD is providing the site and we're installing the equipment. There will already be something there by the end of the year. Our budget allocates 147 million rubles," Alekseyenko said.