Operations

Active coal mining operations

The Company’s hard coal reserves are situated in eight mining areas in the Karvina and Ostrava regions of the Upper Silesian basin, covering a total area of approximately 120 square kilometres. The majority of OKD’s mines are located in the Karvina region and have a seam thickness ranging of between one and eight metres. The Paskov mine is located in the Ostrava region and has an average seam thickness of between 0.5 and 1.2 metres. There are four active OKD hard coal mines: Karvina, Darkov, Paskov and CSM. Reserves in these active mines total 217 million tonnes (as at 1 January 2010). All the coal produced by OKD is of good quality, with the highest quality coal being produced from the Paskov mine.

Our four mines have 23 shafts extracting coal from depths ranging from 600 to 1,000 metres below the surface. All the mines extract coal from mutiple seams using the longwall mining method with shearers or ploughs in connection with mechanised shields or single hydraulic props to cut coal and to secure the excavated area.

Karvina Mine

Brief History:
In 2008 the Lazy and CSA mines were combined into one business unit named Karviná.

Darkov, CSM, CSA and Lazy are connected through underground tunnels and by railways on the surface.

Read more about Karviná Mine

Darkov Mine

Brief History:
Mining in the area where the Darkov mine is located began in 1853 in the Gabriela mine. The Hohenegger and Austria mines began production in 1883 and 1907, respectively. These mines were merged in the 1950s. The Závod 2 site began operations in 1982.

Read more about the Darkov Mine

Paskov Mine

Brief History:
Paskov, with its one active site in Staric, is the only active mine in the Ostrava region. The original Paskov site was founded in 1961, began operations in 1965 and closed in 1999. The Staric site was founded in 1963 and began operations in 1970. In 1994, the Paskov and Staric sites were merged into Paskov.

Read more about the Paskov Mine

CSM Mine

Brief History:
The construction works for CSM located in Karviná began in 1958 and operations began in 1968. In 2005, CMD, which owned CSM, was merged with OKD.

Read more about the CSM Mine 

Coking plants

NWR operates two coking plants in Ostrava through its wholly owned subsidiary, OKK. OKK is the largest producer of foundry coke in Europe. The Jan Sverma and Svoboda facilities combined operate four coking batteries totalling 226 chambers, producing 0.8 million tonnes of coke in 2009. Svoboda is the largest of the two facilities. Coke sales in 2009 were approximately 45 per cent blast furnace coke, 25 per cent foundry coke and 30 per cent other applications.

Jan Sverma
The Jan Sverma facility produces metallurgical coke via one top-charging coking battery with 72 cells per battery. Each cell has a capacity of 15 tonnes of coke per load with coking time of 18 to 22 hours.

Svoboda
The Svoboda facility uses the stamp charging process to produce foundry coke. The facility comprises three coking batteries - two of them are equipped with 50 cells per coking battery and one with 54 cells per battery. Capacity of the cell is 21 tonnes of coal yielding 16 tonnes of coke per load on average with coking time of approximately 32 hours.

Under Coking Plant Optimisation Programme ('COP 2010'), all coking production is being consolidated at the Svoboda site while closing the Jan Sverma operations by the end of 2010. Plans to modernise the Svoboda facilities are focused around the refurbishment of one of existing batteries no. 8  and the construction of a new battery, no. 10, both of which are in the final stages of completion. For further information on the project please refer to Capital Investment Programmes

More detailed information about current coal production and reserves is available in the Investors Relations section.

OKK‘s company website

⁽¹⁾ Year ended 31 December 2009
⁽²⁾ As at 1 January 2010