Hard coal mining in the Czech city of Ostrava ended 30 years ago

Thirty years ago, on 30 June 1994, the last coal tub emerged from the underground workings of the Odra mine in Ostrava, bringing 212 years of hard coal mining in the city to an end. Coal mining had already ended at the Jan Šverma mine in 1991, at the Ostrava mine in 1992 and at the Heřmanice mine in 1993. In 1990, before the start of the winding-down of mining, almost 20.000 people worked at these Ostrava collieries.

Hard coal mining began in Ostrava and the surrounding area in the 1770s. The Old Hlučín coal mines in Petřkovice were among the most significant. Mining and other industries reliant on it expanded in the 1830s. Initially, the mines belonged mainly to Archbishop Rudolf of Habsburg (1788 to 1831), who bequeathed them to the Archbishopric of Olomouc. Salomon Rothschild bought the mines from the archbishopric and began doing business in the Ostrava region in 1843.

Mining also developed in the Karviná region from the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, with the noble Larisch-Mönnich family playing an important role. Until the occupation in 1939, the mines in northern Moravia remained in private hands; during the Second World War, mining was subordinated to the needs of the German occupiers.

After the Second World War, the six mining companies then operating in Silesia and northern Moravia were nationalized and incorporated into the Ostrava-Karviná Coal Mines national enterprise in Ostrava. This later became the OKD Combine and then the state-owned OKD enterprise. The current mining company OKD succeeded it and is now the only producer of hard coal in the Czech Republic. After November 1989, inefficient operations were gradually closed, and the company now mines only at the ČSM underground mine, with its Sever and Jih sites in the Karviná mining district in the southern part of the Upper Silesian Coal Basin.

OKD plans to end mining at the ČSM mine at the turn of 2025 and 2026. It will then spend around three years carrying out the technical closure of the mine and is also preparing for possible further business in coal blend production and green energy.