Everybody IN ... Miners’ union asks workers to buy pit

THE National Union of Mineworkers is trying to raise £2 million from employees at a threatened colliery in an attempt to organise a workers’ buyout.

The NUM reckons it needs an initial £5million to keep the Kellingley pit open, although owner UK Coal has previously said £80 million would be required over the next five years in order to make it profitable within three years.

UK Coal expects to close the mine along with the pit at Thoresby, Nottinghamshire, but it is in talks with the Government and two private lenders over a £20million loan.

A deal would allow UK Coal to go ahead with an orderly wind-down of the business over the next 18 months, rather than an immediate shutdown.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that US mining giant Coronado held talks with UK Coal earlier this year about acquiring the business and it is understood to be monitoring the situation. However, Coronado is not thought to be interested in buying the firm unless it is facing closure. Coronado did not respond to requests for comment.

NUM members at the Kellingley colliery are aiming to raise up to £4,000 from each of the 500 miners at the mine.

The remaining £3million needed to buy the pit would come from commercial lenders, said the union.

UK Coal – which has been owned by an employee benefit trust since the Pension Protection Fund took over its pension schemes when the firm went into administration last year – said it is willing to consider an offer from the NUM.

It added that it was happy to provide all of the necessary financial information for a buyout to go ahead.

A UK Coal spokesman said: ‘Any deal with the NUM will take three to six months, but our talks with the Government are necessary or else we’ll have to shut in three to six days.’

Keith Hartshorne, spokesman for the NUM at Kellingley said: ‘We are looking at the numbers and what the mining plan is for the next five years.

‘We will ask the workforce whether they want to invest in their future.

‘We know it is a profitable mine,’ he added. ‘We mined 50,000 tons of coal last week alone, which is worth £2.5million.’

Coal provides about 40 per cent of Britain’s power requirements, but the price of coal has plummeted in recent years as a result of the fracking revolution, which has seen more coal being exported from the US where it has been displaced as a cheap power source by shale gas.

Russia currently provides nearly half of all the UK’s coal imports.