First Load Of Coal Leaves Reopened Mine
Staff
SophiaTheimproved market conditions for metallurgical coal worldwide are fuelinga new boon for southern West Virginia coal. Affinity Coal cut theribbon on a new operation near Sophia in Raleigh County Wednesday.
Theoperation is a reopening of an old mine works which closed in the mid1980's when the domestic steel market fell on hard times. Thoseconditions have changed and there's a resurgence in worldwide demand formet coal.
"It'sa resource that's in short supply," said Vice-President for HumanResources Mark McCormick. "It's beneficial to our balance of trade andvital to our domestic steel industry."
Affinityis a subsidiary of United Coal which is owned by Ukrainian-basedMetvest, the nation's 10th largest integrated steel producer.
Thecompany plans to hire 250 miners to run the operation in RaleighCounty, which, at full production, will mine 1.5 million tons of coalannually.
"We'retaking applications and we've hired about half of them so far. Weexpect to be fully operational in the second quarter of next year,"McCormick said. "An estimate (of salary) would be about 70-thousanddollars plus the best benefits in the industry."
McCormicksays they've been very successful in recruiting miners for the jobsbecause of the high pay and benefits as well as the workingconditions.
Affinityhas invested $111 million to restart the old works which includesconstruction of a new prep plant. The first trainload of residualcoal left over from the construction work left the mine Wednesday.