China Coal Beijing Coal Mining Machinery Co Ltd (BMJ) recently delivered a new set of 175 hydraulic roof supports to Russia’s Raspadskaya coal mining company, which is controlled by EVRAZ. The supports are for mining of number 48 seam in the Uskovskaya mine, which began in February 2021. The working face length is 300 m with support height range of 1.7-3.8 m and support capacity of 10,600 kN.

Uskovskaya mine extracts GZh-grade coking coal, which, upon washing at the Kuznetskaya and Abashevskaya washing plants, is shipped to EVRAZ steel mills. It is also favoured by third-party customers in Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Ukraine. The average annual production is 2.5 Mt/y. The mine has been implementing its seam 48 access and development investment project since 2018. Evraz’s capex into this project is RUB5.5 billion. Other equipment includes two new Komatsu Mining Joy shearers.

The seam has in-place reserves of 167 Mt of GZh rank coking coal, which is expected to be enough for 25 years of stable operations at the mine. The seam’s first longwall is producing up to 6,000 t of coal daily. The first longwall is expected to be mined out by October 2021.