Evraz mine starts mining new coal seam after investing 6 bln rubles
KEMEROVO. Feb 8 (Interfax) - Raspadskaya Coal Company's Uskovskaya mine has launched the first longwall of Seam 48, the company, which manages the coal assets of Evraz Group, said.
The seam has in-place reserves of 167 million tonnes of GZh rank coking coal, which is expected to be "enough for 25 years of stable operations" at the mine.
"The company spent more than 6 billion rubles on the development of the section," Raspadskaya said.
Miners have "reached planned mining indicators" at the seam's first longwall, producing up to 6,000 tonnes of coal daily. The longwall is expected to be mined out by October 2021.
The longwall is fully outfitted with new mining equipment, the company said. "In order to check the operation of the many elements of the mechanical system, [...] a mini longwall was first assembled on the surface," Raspadskaya said.
Coal from the Uskovskaya mine is sent for processing at the Kuznetskaya and Abashevskaya washing plants and then shipped to Evraz steel mills, as well as exported to Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and China.
Seam 48 is the Uskovsky-2 section, which the mine acquired in September 2018 with a bid of 682.363 million rubles for the license. The starting price was 620.33 million rubles.