Polska Grupa Gornicza, Europe's largest hard coal miner, produced 17.6 million mt of coal in January-August of this year, some 900,000 mt below target, Poland's deputy energy minister Grzegorz Tobiszowski said Thursday.
State-owned PGG had planned production of 18.5 million mt in the first eight months of the year and set a full year output target of 32 million mt.
Falling domestic production has led Polish state coal trader, Weglokoks, to buy foreign shipments of coal in order to honor its contracts to supply overseas buyers in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Germany and Austria.
Weglokoks said Wednesday it expected a shipment of 75,000 mt of coal from the US to arrive in Poland in mid-October.
Speaking in the Polish parliament, Tobiszowski defended PGG's production level noting that it was higher than in the same period last year, when it was 15.5 million mt, and comparable to 2015, when January-August output was 18 million mt.
Tobiszowski said that the average price PGG achieved for coal sold to individual customers increased by 16% between August 2015 and September 2017, while global coal prices rose by about 65% in the same period.
According to the energy ministry, PGG's large-lumped coal averaged Zloty 718/mt ($196/mt) in August 2015, rising to Zloty 828/mt in August this year.
