2006 - Page 7

Proposed Waste Incinerator At Rufford Old Colliery Site

An announcement by the council in the local paper ‘The Chad’ to erect a £90m incinerator plant on the site of the closed Rufford colliery at Rainworth shocked the local residents who had never been told of such a possibility and a campaign against such an action was quickly organised. The local council was backing the scheme. (The scheme would be rejected in 2012, to the delight of the campaigners and local residents).

MP Clashes With UDM

Warsop MP John Mann (Lab) clashed with Neil Greatrex President of the UDM on BBC 1’s Politics show over the threat by the UDM to recover its costs of £1.2m from a recent court case lost by 65 ex miners.

UDM union members accepted a pay deal over 3 years. In opposition to their Union officials members of the NUM accepted the same deal, back dated to January 2006 giving inflation-linked pay increases, and back pay of around £150 plus improvements in overtime rates and other benefits including enhanced redundancy terms.

Welbeck Production Stopped Again

Coal production was stopped at Welbeck (Nottinghamshire) once again for about two weeks in August 2006. The idea of working one face at a time is fine when all is well but any problem and there is no production. Development headings continued to prepare for another face. Around £5m would be spent on equipping 244s retreat face using Turbo Transmission Technology (TTT). The Joy 4LS shearer was capable of cutting the 2.2m high Deep Soft face at the rate of 6m a minute producing around 11 tonnes. The machine has a softer start using automatic acceleration, speed control, load sharing and AFC water management. The 322m long face line is equipped with heavy duty 2 x 510 IFS chocks and coal is loaded out from the 900mm wide face panzer with 38mm conveyor chains onto 1.1 metre wide stage loader leading onto a 1.22m wide gate belt capable of moving 1,500 tonnes per hour with a prediction of producing up to 40,000 tonnes per week. It replaces 207s panel which produced 670,000 tonnes

Resins

Resins are classified as a dangerous substance and have to be transported and used to strict controls. Guidelines are used where resin is injected or 2 part resin type foam which is used to reinforce strata. Phenolic foams are used to tackle cavities.

Harworth To Close

The closure of Harworth as I had predicted, came at the end of September 2006. Weighting and floor lift in the main gate caused huge problems once more resulting in face production being halted again. Production was abandoned except for salvage coal. The 2 development headings for the next face 32s were halted when a 2m fault was encountered running in the direction of advance. £5m had been spent on development yet once again as at other pits faults have been encountered when the area has been assumed to be fault free. Where was the planning and geological isopachytes, cross sections, dip of seam and underground forward and sideways seismic surveys proven to be of good accuracy and in use in the 1970s / 80s?

Thieves stole electrical cables ‘still connected to the power supply’ from pit top buildings. Security was tightened up yet again!

Of the 300 odd men, some were offered jobs at the remaining pits held by UK Coal. Salvage operations continued to recover face chocks and drivage machines. The pit was mothballed awaiting possible redevelopment of the Barnsley Bed (Top Hard seam)! I believe this to be doubtful, as at least £80m in today’s money would be needed initially for cross-measures drivages to access the seam. Then there would be further x millions (pounds) to develop faces. As time goes on these figures could well escalate making any project completely untenable. (Possible plans to access the reserves by driving two 5,000m long roadways escalated the possible cost up to £200m in 2009 !!)

Losses Loom On The Horizon

On Friday 13th October 2006 UK Coal declared that unfortunately the projected profit for the next quarter would turn into loss of £5m. Surprise, surprise! As stated earlier ‘it is fatal to mortgage possible coal production’. In my career I have been approached numerous times by Undermanagers, Assistant Managers and Deputy Managers to ‘put some yardage in for future weekend shifts’. ‘It will make the figures look better’ and we’ll get it back next week’! I never would do it so they had to back off.

However there was an announcement in February 2007 that there would be a profit of £17m albeit that the remaining pits made a big loss. Amid growing speculation that planning permission would be granted for brown field sites at closed colliery sites, land previously belonging to NCB at present, the portfolio was worth £325m.

Profit?

The so called profit for the UK Coal mines came from the sale of land and the 50,000 acres remaining providing planning permission can be granted to develop the mainly brown field sites then the figure could be in the region of £800m. It was muted in February 2007 that the mines could be sold off.

Overall, the remaining 4 deep mines had made a loss of £29m compared to a loss of £46m for 6 mines in 2006. Further cuts in staffing at the collieries was underway to reduce costs.

Opencast

Opencast output continued to decline from 1m tonnes in 2005 to 0.6m mainly due to adverse planning restrictions etc. The Coal Authority issuing licences for coal mining receive some 12,000 for tonnages of up to 0.25m tonnes and proportionately more for higher tonnages extracted by opencast methods. In addition a levy of 10p a tonne is paid to the Authority.

Mines Rescue Service

The Mines Rescue Service has had to face great changes from the initial purpose of keeping a full-time brigade on standby should any emergency arise at a colliery and training colliery teams to deal with minor incidents. With the demise of the industry, the Rescue Service with HQ at Mansfield Woodhouse has continued to try to obtain business from other sources due to the declining revenue from the levy on deep mined coal as outlined previously. Of course the mines still donate at something like 18p per tonne?

As stated in the July 2007 issue of the BACM-TEAM magazine, with the anticipated closure of Tower colliery in South Wales the problems will exacerbate.

Fatalities

On a more sombre note there have been 5 fatalities in the past year involving both surface and underground mines. There had been 2 others at non-coal mines and 2 British Consultants were killed whilst working abroad. There had been none in the 3 counties of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire or Leicestershire however there were 3 fatalities (including one contractor) at Daw Mill in Warwickshire.

Manpower at the mine in 1993/94 was 728 u/g, 67 s/f plus 94 contractors u/g, 80 s/f plus 113 under officials and 41 WPIS.

Strict vigilance and correct methods of work must be adhered to at these remaining mines.

Rossington And Harworth Merged Under One Management Team

Rossington in Yorkshire and Harworth in Nottinghamshire were merged in December 2006 not by underground connection but under one management team. Harworth as I had prophesised is almost certain to close as UK Coal had been unable to agree satisfactory arrangements with the generators to invest in new faces. Hargreaves had purchased Maltby (Yorkshire) in February 2007. This would leave Thoresby and Welbeck as the 2 remaining collieries in Nottinghamshire.

Earnings

Workmen at these pits and Daw Mill could earn over £1,000 per week with bonuses and maybe as high as £2,000. Deputies wage around £43,000 per annum with overtime rates at about £45 an hour! Paying excess wages for a higher production was a poor decision as is seen in the long term. Those ancient miners earning one groat a day (about todays minimum wage) would turn over in their grave. However an industry cannot sustain paying wages like that.