Coal news and updates

West Coast coal mine closes

The poor price for coal has forced the suspension of operations at the West Coast's last underground coal mine and the loss of 20 jobs.

The Roa Mine, near Blackball, closed today.

It is owned by NZ Coal & Carbon. Executive director Brent Francis says they had been developing the mine for the past 12 months and the next stage was to go hydro.

However, with the low price of coal it was just not economically viable to do that, he told NZ Newswire.

The 20 workers would be given their redundancies. They would be the first to get a call when the mine reopened, Mr Francis said.

NZCC's other coal mine, the opencast Echo Mine southeast of Reefton, which employed about 30, remained operating.

Echo produced about 180,000 tonnes of coal each year and the hydro development of Roa would have brought total production to 300,000, Mr Francis said.

"At this stage the economics are just not viable ... it [the coal price] needs to be US$20 from where it is now."

Low coal prices have already claimed state-owned coal miner Solid Energy, which has closed or cut jobs at mines on the West Coast and Huntly.