The provincial authorities of China’s coal mining hub Shanxi will close all small coal mines with an annual capacity lower than 600,000 tonnes in the region by the end of this year as a part of the province’s plan to improve safety conditions and to get rid of outdated mines.
Shanxi will close 35 small mines with a total capacity of 14.85 million tonnes out of the total 954 mines. At the end of 2019, the province’s total capacity was 99475 million tonnes.
By 2022, the province will slash the number of coal mines to 900. It will also ban the permits of new coal mining projects below 900,000 tpa. The government also said that it will improve safety conditions at non-coal mines, metallurgical plants, and chemical producers in the province.
Previously in May, Shanxi targeted to cut in half its coal-washing capacity to 1.8 billion tpa and cut the count of plants involved in the process to 1,200 by the end of September.
