The mine’s team is due to work on the face for two years.
Miners at the face use a special sub-level caving method, which enables thick seam mining in one coal layer of up to 10 meters, extracting maximum volumes of coal in one go while decreasing the risk of breeding fire.
“The launch of the new long wall face will significantly boost Olzherasskaya-Novaya Mine’s capacity and increase our coking coal output. In 2016 we expect the mine to produce approximately 2 million tonnes of raw coal,” Mechel Mining Management Company OOO’s Chief Executive Officer Pavel Shtark commented.