Store Nor­ske: black gold yields red num­bers

The Nor­we­gi­an mining com­pa­ny Store Nor­ske is curr­ent­ly ope­ra­ting deep­ly in red num­bers. After seve­ral good years, an excep­ti­on in Spitsbergen’s mining histo­ry, the loss was near 234 mil­li­on Kro­ner (29 mil­li­on Euro) in 2012, and 2013 is not expec­ted to be much bet­ter. The main reasons are said to be low pri­ces on the world mar­ket for coal and the incre­asing­ly dif­fi­cult con­di­ti­ons in the main mine Svea Nord near Sveagru­va, which is now ope­ra­ting in mar­gi­nal parts of the coal seam, with lower quan­ti­ties and infe­ri­or qua­li­ties.

A new mine is expec­ted to ope­ra­te from 2015 at Lun­ckef­jel­let, north of the cur­rent mine Svea Nord, but only until 2018.

Store Nor­ske reacts by cut­ting down cos­ts. Employees will have to face release, and the daugh­ter com­pa­ny Store Nor­ske Gull, which has been pro­s­pec­ting for gold for years at St. Jons­fjord on the west coast of Spits­ber­gen, will not con­ti­nue its acti­vi­ties in 2013.

Source: Finnmarken.no

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