ONE of the country's few remaining coal mines is to close - just weeks after the North-East's last mine was shut by owner UK Coal.
Production at Welbeck Colliery at Mansfield, in Nottinghamshire, will be phased out over the next 12 months, UK Coal said. The announcement comes weeks after UK Coal said Ellington Colliery, in Northumberland - the region's last deep mine - was closed permanently due to flooding.
Wellbeck pit, which was sunk in 1912, employs 520 workers, some of whom could transfer to other pits.
It is closing because its remaining reserves cannot be mined viably.
The colliery, which has been producing coal for almost 90 years, lost £20m last year after geological problems halved its planned output to 0.8 million tonnes.
UK Coal said a review of revised mining plans over the past three months had failed to identify measures to allow the remaining five million tonnes coal reserves to be extracted viably.
The decision will leave the UK with only seven deep pits. UK Coal will have six after the closures of Ellington and Welbeck.
UK Coal said that management, mining unions and workers had been reviewing options since last November, but these had been limited by the low level of recoverable reserves and geological faults.
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