On July 15, Ukraine's largest vertically integrated mining and steelmaking company Metinvest announced that it plans to increase its in-house production of coking coal, following the commissioning of Affinity Mine, owned by its subsidiary United Coal Company.
The planned capacity of this coal mining unit will amount to 1.9 million mt of the highest quality coking coal, with the mine expected to achieve the production targets by 2012. Total volume of coal to be mined at United Coal Company in 2011 is expected to increase by 14 percent to 8.2 million mt.
In terms of Metinvest's Ukrainian coal assets development strategy, mining of coking coal is expected to increase by 7 percent to 6.2 million mt in 2011, compared to 5.8 million mt in 2010, and by another 5 percent to 6.5 million mt in 2012. In 2011, Metinvest intends to spend UAH 930 million (US$116 million) for these purposes, 1.3 times more than in the previous year.
Expansion of in-house high quality coal production will enable Metinvest to strengthen its vertical integration and produce high quality coke in order to improve performance of its steelmaking plants' blast furnaces.