Castleton Commodities International is planning to sell its Cyrus River Coal Terminal load-out and storage facilities in West Virginia to a Turkish buyer, multiple market sources said Wednesday.
The river dock facility, located on the Big Sandy River in Kenova, is "a storage and blending terminal where 5 million st of coal can be aggregated, stored and/or blended to higher specifications, then loaded on barges and trucks," according to CCI's website.
Cyrus River also has roughly 1.2 million st of surface storage, a fleet capacity of 13 barges, and can load one barge/hour and load 50 and unload 340 trucks/day.
On Monday, CCI removed Cyrus River Terminal information from its website.
Five independent sources told S&P Global Platts that a group from Turkey was the buyer, though none knew its name.
CCI's Senior VP and Managing Director Brad Burmaster did not to return multiple calls and emails from Platts.
"No one seems to know who these guys are," said a market source.
FACILITY TO REOPEN 'LATE SPRING'
According to a West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection filing, the facility was shut permanently in January 2017, with most equipment sold and "no coal or personnel present."
At the time, there were "no plans to re-open," according to the filing.
Burmaster filed a general permit registration application to the DEP on April 9 seeking to reopen the facility and resume operations. In the filing, Burmaster said: "The coal storage and barge load-out facility is scheduled to re-open during the late spring of this year."
Sources said the facility was expected to reopen in the next two weeks and was looking for employees.
"The facility plans to begin operating the barge offload, conveying, storage areas, processing and barge loadout, which is still in place at the facility, once again," according to the filing.
The application was approved by Daniel Roberts of the DEP's New Source Review Permitting Section on May 29, according to a separate DEP filing.
DEP Environmental Resources Associate Jennifer Rice said Tuesday she did not have any information on a change of ownership.
CCI also owns the Slones Branch Coal Terminal in Pike County, Kentucky.
Cyrus River was purchased in August 2008 from Kanawha River Terminals. It was opened by Cyrus Dock Company in September 1990, according to US Mine Safety and Health Administration data.
