OREANDA-NEWS. On August 28, the Kostromovskaya mine, which is incorporated in Belon Group, was officially commissioned. The opening ceremony was attended by Aman Gumirovich Tuleyev, the Governor of the Kemerovo Region, Andrey Petrovich Dobrov, the President of Belon Group, and Viktor Filippovich Rashnikov, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Magnitogorsky Steel Mill.

The mine’s coal reserves amount to 24,645,000 tons of high-value metallurgical coal of “Zh” grade, which are highly demanded in metallurgy. The mine's annual production capacity is estimated to be 2 mln tons of coal.

By launching the Kostromovskaya mine, Belon Group is considerably expanding its raw materials base, which allows increasing the share of the Company’s own coal in the total amount of coal supplied to its coal preparation plants. All the coal produced at the mine will be cleaned at the Belovskaya central coal preparation plant, which is owned by Belon Group.

The Kostromovskaya mine will develop the Nikitinskoye coal field. The license for its development was purchased by Belon Group in 2002. The mine’s construction started at the end of 2003, and was finished in the first half of the current year. The total investment in the mine during the entire construction period amounted to RUB 4,562 mln (VAT not included).

According to President of Belon Group Andrey P. Dobrov, the Kostromovskaya mine can be rightfully considered one of the most up-to-date and technologically advanced facilities of Kuzbass for the level of production organization, industrial and labour safety and technical equipment. Coal beds are developed using a mechanized face complex produced by Joy Mining Machinery, Great Britain, and KSP-32 and GPSK tunnelling machines are used for tunnel driving. People and materials in the mine workings are transported with the help of the suspended monorail road with diesel-hydraulic locomotives by DBT SCHARF, Germany. A conveyor system is used to deliver coal onto the surface. Management of the technological processes at the mine is fully automated.

Besides, an electric substation, a water treatment plant, a boiler facility and a surface fire-control pump station were built. Construction of the Kostromovskaya railway station and of the railway track from Yegozovo station to the mine, which is 10.5 km long, is now being completed.

“It is extremely important,” noted Aman Tuleyev in his speech, “that while designing the mine, special attention was paid to the miners’ safe work.” To ensure this, the Mikon-1R modern automated system of air gas control was installed at the mine. The main fan was put into operation to provide good ventilation for the mine workings. In addition, production at the mine is based on the “mine–face” method, which allows minimizing the period of the miners’ underground work. The main thing, in the Governor’s opinion, is that in the long view preliminary methane drainage of the mine workings with high methane concentration will be performed at the Kostromovskaya mine.

As the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Magnitogorsky Steel Mill, which is a strategic partner of Belon Group, Viktor F. Rashnikov stressed the importance of commissioning the new mine in the sense of increasing and stabilizing the rate of metallurgical coal supply to the steel mill.

With the commissioning of the Kostromovskaya mine, the total production of metallurgical coal at Belon’s enterprises will increase by a factor of 1.5 or even more. By the end of 2008, the mine is planned to produce 600,000 tons of coal, in 2009 the mine will produce 1.5 mln tons of coal, and in 2010, when the second-train facility is commissioned, it will reach the annual design capacity of 2 mln tons of coal.