St. Louis, Missouri-based Arch Coal announced Monday that it has idled its Cumberland River Coal Company complex as a result of weak coal prices in the market.
The facility, located on the Virginia-Kentucky border, is comprised of two underground mines, and although production has ceased, the company will continue to sell of the remaining coal reserves at the mines’ surface.
“With this move, we are actively responding to currently challenged metallurgical coal markets while striving to enhance our overall competitive cost position in Appalachia,” John Eaves, Arch’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “Our strategy is to increasingly shift our portfolio toward higher-margin, lower-cost metallurgical coal operations, while retaining our valuable reserves for when market conditions strengthen in the future.”
According to Arch Coal, the Cumberland complex sold 290,000 tons of mostly metallurgical coal during the first half of the year, and the company expects to sell about 200,000 tons less in the full-year 2014 than it did in 2013; the company’s metallurgical coal sales outlook was adjusted to predict between 6.3 million tons to 6.9 million tons for the year.
