Driven into coal: how Russian coal mining companies are coping with the crisis

The professional holiday of coal mining workers this year coincided with another significant date – the 90th anniversary of the labor record of the most famous Russian miner Alexei Stakhanov, who initiated the Stakhanov movement and the race for productivity. Today, Stakhanov's record has been beaten many times, but the situation in the industry cannot be called calm due to the continuing low coal prices and the difficult situation in foreign markets. On the eve of Miner's Day, Izvestia found out how the industry adapts to difficult external conditions and what prospects open up for the coal mining industry using the example of the SUEK-Kuzbass enterprise.

There is no talk of reducing production yet.

The coal industry in Russia is going through a difficult period due to lower world prices and an oversupply of coal mining in China, which has led to a reduction in exports. The crisis has already affected the country's largest coal–producing region, Kuzbass, where 17 enterprises were forced to suspend production this year alone. According to Ilya Seredyuk, Governor of the Kemerovo Region, the workers have been transferred to other enterprises. Coal mining enterprises in the region offer more than 1,300 vacancies in the main professions

— The income tax paid by coal companies depends on world prices and the volume of coal consumption. And due to the severe crisis in the coal industry, we are experiencing a shortage of these funds," he said at a meeting with journalists in Leninsk—Kuznetsk dedicated to Miner's Day.

But Kuzbass has an undeniable advantage — it produces several brands of fuel at once, including the most expensive coking coal. The demand for high-quality coal in the world remains high.

Import substitution in production

Under the conditions of sanctions, industry enterprises were forced to look for domestic analogues of foreign equipment. Since the early 2000s, the coal industry has preferred imported machinery: the tunneling combines produced in Europe had greater productivity compared to their domestic counterparts. But Russian manufacturers also had their own niche – the most difficult sections to traverse were amenable only to Russian cars. Due to this, the production of such equipment in the country has been preserved. Today, the tunneling combines produced in Kopeisk are used at the 7 November-Novaya mine, which is part of the production division of the Ruban Mine Management. Employees admit that it can sometimes be difficult to adapt to domestic technology after working on foreign analogues, but all the wishes of people on the ground are taken into account.

— We give feedback, if there are any malfunctions, they are corrected, — says Alexander Berkuta, foreman of the best brigade of the preparatory section of the A.D. Ruban mine.

There are no analogues of combine harvesters in Russia yet, so coal mining is carried out using existing imported machinery. Fortunately, spare parts for European equipment can be found through parallel imports. But Kuzbass is looking for an opportunity to replace imports with its own production. Already, 14 sections of mechanized fasteners produced by the Sib-Damel division of SUEK—Kuzbass are being tested in the Ruban mine. The supports support the roof of the treatment face and the safety of the miners — during the excavation process, they move and create a corridor for the combine, which extracts coal. After working out the face, they are dismantled in a special capsule. The results of the three-month tests will be taken into account in the permits that Sibdamel expects to receive in the near future.

The company not only offers analogues of foreign technology, but also conducts its own developments. For example, a fundamentally new model of underground transport with a passenger module has been created here.

— This is our entire concept from beginning to end. That is, in principle, this layout does not exist now as an analogue for underground equipment. Usually, options for redesigning something well-known civilian are offered, but we did not follow this path," Alexander Walter, technical director of Sib—Damel, said about the development.

Own developments for the safety of miners

The main advantage of Kuzbass is that it is one of the richest deposits with large coal seams. But there is also a nuance — methane gas accumulates in the mines of Kuzbass, which makes production technologically more difficult.

For effective monitoring of the mine atmosphere and all technological processes, a single dispatch center (EDAC) has been created, which analyzes data from tens of thousands of sensors installed at the company's enterprises.

— To calculate how much coal we have extracted, we do not use scales in the literal sense of the word. We use the amount of electricity consumed to calculate exactly what specific gravity passed through this conveyor. The error was less than one percent, based on a real strain gauge measurement," Alexander Boyarkin, senior control mechanic for automated Systems and communications, gives an example.

This method of measuring weight turned out to be much more profitable than the traditional one and allowed the company to reduce the cost of maintaining weighing equipment. The system developed by EDAC is capable of self-verification: additional gas analyzers of domestic production for monitoring the content of oxygen, methane and carbon dioxide in the mine increase the accuracy of readings and contribute to the safety of production.

Diversification of the Kuzbass economy

The proven coal reserves in Kuzbass will last for centuries, and one miner provides jobs for at least three people, it is estimated in the region. Therefore, economic diversification is designed not to replace coal production, but to create new growth points in the territory, aimed, among other things, at ensuring safe working conditions for miners.

The Kuzbass-Donbass Scientific and Educational Center (REC) operates in the Kemerovo Region: the regions are jointly developing new technologies and implementing innovative solutions to facilitate the work of miners.

"For example, today we are continuing to test a unique unmanned dump truck that can be used in open—pit mining operations and, using unmanned technology, cope with the tasks that a whole team of drivers and machinists used to cope with," Ilya Serdyuk told reporters.

The REC has already developed and implemented 230 solutions for digitalization and ecology of the region, in total more than 600 developments are protected by patents, Seredyuk emphasizes.

Western sanctions imposed against Russian coal mining enterprises have forced businesses not only to look for domestic analogues of Western technology, but also to reorient markets. It is expected that the measures to support the coal industry introduced by the Government of the Russian Federation will also have a certain effect.