Operations - Margam

Margam Opencast Coal Site is located near the villages of Cefn Cribwr and Kenfig Hill, approximately 5 km north west of Bridgend. The site straddles the borders of Bridgend and Neath Port Talbot County Borough Councils, has been in operation since 2001 and is a continuation of the earlier Park Slip West site. It employs sixty five men and women, many of whom live locally.

It is approximately 196 hectares in extent, although the area of excavation is just 45 hectares, the remainder of the site comprising soil and overburden storage areas, coal stocking and screening facilities, water treatment areas and an office and workshop complex. The working area can be up to 120 metres deep.

The site produces approximately 350,000 tonnes per year of high volatile bituminous Coal, which is supplied to a variety of large scale industrial customers and also to the Company's Washing plant at Onllwyn, where it is blended with coals from the other company sites for onward delivery to Aberthaw Power Station. All of the coal produced at the site leaves the site by rail at the rate of two trains per day.

There are three large excavators moving overburden on site, with a fleet of sixteen dump trucks, most of which are one hundred tonne Caterpillar 777 rigid dump trucks. Smaller machines clean, load and transport the coal to the coal processing area, where it is screened for sizing and blended to meet chemical properties as specified by the customers. Additional, ancillary plant and equipment such as fuel bowsers, pumps, lighting sets, water bowsers, etc. provide essential support to the excavation work.

The main seams worked on site range from the Two Feet Nine Seam to the Bute Seam located in the middle and lower Carboniferours coal measures; the geological structure of these measures is extremely complex, with steeply dipping and highly contorted strata occurring throughout the site. In addition Deep Coal mine workings dating from the mid nineteenth century are occasionally encountered in the form of old timber supports, sections of rail, collapsed strata and inflows of water.

Strict Planning and Environmental controls ensure that effective measures are taken to minimise any noise, dust or vibration emanating from the site. These controls are monitored by the planning and environmental health departments of the two local authorities, whilst water quality is regularly tested and inspected by the Environment Agency.

The company has submitted a planning application to the local authorities to extend the working area to the west of the existing site,
to mine a further 2.4 million tonnes of coal.

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