Czech coal mining has been in decline for years; OKD now mines only at the ČSM underground mine

Key facts about the winding down of mining at OKD’s mines (the state-owned Diamo will end operations at the Frenštát hard-coal mine and begin its liquidation with the symbolic extraction of the last skip):

– OKD is the only producer of hard coal in the Czech Republic. The company has been state-owned again since 2018, when the state took it over through its company Prisko. OKD had previously run into difficulties because of falling coal prices and its own excessive debt, and filed for insolvency in 2016.

– Mining at OKD has been winding down for decades because it was not profitable. The company now mines only at the ČSM underground mine, whose North and South sites are in the Karviná mining district in the southern part of the Upper Silesian Coal Basin. It produces 1.2 million tonnes of coal a year. OKD employs approximately 3,300 people, including contractors, of whom 2,500 are direct employees. The company ended last year with a net profit of 5.1 billion crowns, its highest since 2011. Its profit rose more than twentyfold compared with 2021, when it stood at 216.8 million crowns; in 2020, the company posted a loss of almost 2.5 billion.