Joy Mining Machinery has signed a contract with Huainan Mining Industry for the supply of longwall equipment. The contract is for two 7LS6 longwall shearers, along with spare parts and product services. Huainan is a major coal producer in Anhui Province, close to Shanghai; annually producing 30.8 Mt of raw coal, with plans to increase production to 72.5 Mt by 2010 with the introduction of high-efficiency mining equipment and the opening of six new coal mines presently under development.
With the opening of these mines, Huainan Mining Industry will double the number of coal mines it operates, from six to 12, and will be operating a total of 23 longwall faces. This, Joy said, represents future requirements for a variety of highly productive, efficient longwall mining equipment, such as the Joy 7LS2 and 7LS3 shearers for the extraction of medium thickness coal seams, and continuous miner bolters for the development of longwall panels.
Joy has plans to open a sales and service office in Huainan to support this important and growing market for quality, high efficient and productive mining equipment.
The two Joy7LS6 shearers purchased in late September will be operating in Huainan’s Guqiao mine, one of the new mines now under development.
In Britain, Joy Mining Machinery UK will be furnishing two complete state-of-the-art longwall mining systems to Powerfuel as the company reopens its Hatfield coal mine in Yorkshire. The two systems each consists of a Joy 7LS shearer, 700 t capacity hydraulic roof supports with Joy’s RS20s control system, and an armoured face conveyor and stage loader, as well as ancillary equipment.
Hatfield Colliery, located near Doncaster, was idled in 2004, and has been undergoing a programme to develop its reserves and to construct a mine-mouth clean-coal power plant with the capacity of 1 GW. This has been a joint venture with the Russian coal giant, Kuzbassrazrezugol (KRU) that, in March 2006, signed an agreement to acquire a 51% interest in Powerfuel.
This represents KRU’s first major direct international acquisition. The company, already an important exporter of coal to the UK, operates surface mines in the Kuznetsky coal basin (Kuzbass) in southwestern Siberia, and has coal reserves of about 2,000 Mt.
Prior to its delivery to Hatfield, the first of the two longwall systems is scheduled to undergo compatibility trials in August 2007. The second longwall system will be delivered in 2008. When the two systems are fully operational, the mine is expected to produce about 2 Mt/y from the 3 m Barnsley seam, primarily for delivery to power plants in Yorkshire and the Midlands.
