New World Resources completes OKK coke plant sale

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NWR said that the sale of OKK, which operates the 850,000 tpy Svoboda coking plant in Ostrava, would free up cash for investment in the group’s mining business.

“This disposal is part of a wider process at the end of which NWR will emerge as Europe’s leading miner and marketer of coking coal by 2017,” NWR executive chairman Gareth Penney said.

The miner reported losses of $67.5 million in the first nine months of 2013 on the back of “difficult market conditions”, seeing average realised prices drop by 26% and sales drop by close to a million tonnes in the period, compared with levels seen in the same period a year earlier.

In a bid to kerb losses, the miner closed its unprofitable Paskov coking coal mine in September.