The UK will start to use again the new deep coal mine, the facility has been unanimously approved by Cumbria County Council, despite the ongoing ecological crisis and activists protests.
A new deep coal mine is an innovative £165 million facility, which planned to start its work after 1989. The coal mine will be called the Woodhouse Colliery and is to be located on a brownfield site near Whitehaven whose residents are protesting against the facility’s functioning due to the harm for the environment.
Facility’s owner, West Cumbria Mining (WCM), shared its plans to extract coking coal along the coastline between Whitehaven and St Bees in Copeland, with hopes of extracting 2.5 million tonnes of metallurgical coal each year. The market niche in the UK and Europe is ready to welcome the coal from England, so, the approved coal mine will be processed in the region and supplied to several European steel-making plants.
According to the statistics, coal production is forecast to grow globally over the next three years despite major players scaling down their capacity.
The innovative deep coal mine will start its work by the end of 2019
The British company WCM now needs to meet a series of planning conditions before it can move forward to the next phase of the development – site work is expected to begin later this year.
West Cumbria Mining’s CEO Mark Kirkbride said the planning move was an important milestone in the project.
“We now look forward to moving towards the construction of Woodhouse Colliery and harnessing the extensive mining history and knowledge in West Cumbria to operate a state-of-the-art mine, including the highest levels of health and safety and technology to ultimately realise our vision of becoming a leading European producer of high-quality metallurgical coal for steel making,” he concluded.
