January 3 (SeeNews) - Serbian state-owned power utility Elektroprivreda Srbije (EPS) plans to invest 100 million euro ($120.2 million) to acquire equipment for the Radljevo open pit coal mine in 2018, energy minister Aleksandar Antic has said.
The company expects to start coal production at the Radljevo mine next year, Antic said, according to a statement issued by EPS last week after the official launch of the Polje G open pit mine in the Kolubara mining basin.
The annual coal production in Radljevo is estimated at between five and six million tonnes, while the coal deposits at the mine are estimated at 34.6 million tonnes, EPS quoted Antic as saying.
EPS's coal production is estimated to have increased by 1.6 million tonnes in 2017, the managing director of the company, Milorad Grcic, said in the same statement.
In May, Antic said the government aims to increase the coal production at the Kolubara mining basin to between 28-30 million tonnes annually.
The Kolubara mining basin, comprising 14 open pit mines, has estimated coal reserves of 2.2 billion tonnes of lignite, one of the largest in Europe.
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