Kopalnia Węgla Kamiennego Bobrek
The Bobrek mine ( Polish Kopalnia Węgla Kamiennego Bobrek ; German Countess Johanna Grube) is an active coal mine in the eponymous district of Bytom , Poland.
history
Countess Johanna Grube
Although the Hohenzollern , Gotthard and Paulus mines of Schaffgotsch's coal holdings were already well developed at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, a new mine was built between 1907 and 1908 to the northwest of the previous facilities and named it in honor of the adoptive daughter of Karl Godulla , Johanna Gryzik , Countess Johanna Grube. It was part of the Paulus-Hohenzollern mine until the division of Upper Silesia in 1922 . The coal extracted here was used almost exclusively to generate electricity in the neighboring Szombierki power station .
First of all, the "Graf-Hans-Schacht" (today "Bolesław") was sunk with 440 m (double conveyance, cableway, moving weather shaft) and through it the first coal could be brought to the surface in 1910; soon the "Gräfin-Johanna" shaft (today "Jozéf") with 440 m (same functions as "Graf-Hans") was added. The production was initially 20,625 tonnes per year, the workforce comprised 400 employees.
Up until the outbreak of the First World War, further expansion took place rapidly, so that in 1916 over half a million tons of coal could be mined despite the restrictions caused by the war.
As on numerous other plants, the global economic crisis brought setbacks here too, but production picked up again as part of the preparations for the Second World War and reached 3 million tonnes a year on the eve of the new war. During this period, in addition to the above-mentioned extraction shafts, the mine also had the Johannaschacht (extending weather shaft) with 327 m of the former Elisabethgrube.
During the Second World War itself, the mine was forced to drastically increase its production without being able to carry out the necessary infrastructure measures at the same time. In 1943 the mine reached its all-time high with 12,000 tons of coal per day.
Berve mine
In April 1938, west of Bytom-Bobrek, the "Berveschacht" with a depth of 300 m, owned by the Schaffgotsch family, went into production as an independent mine. Another shaft, "Stephan" with 291 m, belonged to it. In the next year, the facility lost its independence and became part of the Countess Johanna Grube.
CHP Bobrek
In 1945 the mine was named Bobrek (German name Menyanthes) and was administered by the Ruda ZPW.
The first post-war years were marked by great difficulties because this mine - like other mines - had been run for wear during the war and important devices were not available. In addition, there was often a lack of suitable repair material.
It was not until the 1960s that significant investments were made in a new coal washing plant, a new chew and a contemporary lamp room . As a result, the plant's production stabilized at around 2.5 million tonnes of coal per year.
A serious accident occurred on September 7, 1975, when the subsidence in the shaft area was so great that the 38 m high headframe over the Bolesław shaft collapsed.
As in many other mines in Upper Silesia, there were clashes between the military and the workforce on Bobrek in 1981/82.
Mergers with other mines
The 1990s were a phase of profound restructuring, amalgamation and closure in the Polish mining industry, which also affected the mines in the area of the city of Bytom.
On March 1, 1993, the Bobrek colliery became part of the Bytom Coal Company and gradually merged with both Szombierki (September 1, 1993) and Miechowice (January 1, 1997).
The new composite mine kept its name for a while and was now called Bobrek-Miechowice or Bytom III. After just two years, the next restructuring took place through the closure of Miechowice and finally on January 1, 2005 the merger with Karsten-Zentrum to form the Bobrek-Centrum mine under the direction of Kompania Węglowa SA
present
As part of the sale of the mine by KWSA to Węglokoks SA in April 2015, the association of Bobrek and Centrum was reversed and Centrum was shut down. The main reason for this new structural measure was that in the first half of 2014 the Bobrek-Centrum composite mine with 3110 workers imported a loss of 100.96 zł per ton of coal mined. Part of these high losses may be due to the fact that the Karsten-Centrum plant below the city of Bytom was mining coal and there was considerable mining damage there.
Bobrek currently still has a mining area of 7.8 km², in which 16.5 million tons of hard coal are estimated.
The mine currently has five shafts:
- Józef with a depth of 870 m (material and weather shaft)
- Bolesław with a depth of 779 m (main shaft)
- Zbigniew with a depth of 758 m (extending weather shaft, flushing offset)
- Ignacy at a depth of 642 m (taking off)
- John 742 m (moving in)
The lifting capacity of Bołeslaw is 14,000 t / day.
Today there are two conveyor levels on Bobrek, the 726-m and 840-m level. Part of the production is transported directly by rail to the neighboring Jadwiga coking plant and processed there.
Funding figures
1938: 3.20 million t; 1970: 2.53 million t; 1979: 2.60 million t
literature
- Jerzy Jaros: Słownik historyczny kopalń węgla na ziemiach polskich . Katowice 1984.
- Yearbook for the Upper Mining District Wroclaw . Phönix-Verlag, Kattowitz / Breslau / Berlin 1913. Digitized version at http://www.dbc.wroc.pl/dlibra/publication?id=3349&tab=3 (last accessed on May 5, 2015)
- Kurt König: The coal mining in Upper Silesia from 1945–1955. Scientific contributions to the history and regional studies of Eastern Central Europe . Published by the Johann Gottfried Herder Institute. Marburg 1958.
- Paul Deutsch: The Upper Silesian coal and steel industry before and after the division of the industrial area . Bonn 1926.
- Werner Röhr: On the role of heavy industry in annexed Polish Upper Silesia for the war economy in Germany from 1939 to 1949 (= yearbook for economic history . Volume 130). Downloadable as a PDF file from http://www.digitalis.uni-koeln.de/JWG (last accessed on October 5, 2015).
Web links
- http://igrek.amzp.pl/mapindex.php?cat=FLOTZKARTOS 43 Flötzkarten (sic) of the Upper Silesian coal basin as JPG files, the field boundaries, seams and shafts according to the stock from 1902, published by the "Verlag von Priebatsch's Buchhandlung, Breslau "(accessed on July 14, 2015)
- The Polish website http://www.wnp.pl/artykuly/oddzial-kwk-quot-bobrek-centrum-quot-ruch-quot-bobrek-quot,-5018.html provides relatively detailed information about the mine (accessed on 23. October 2015)
- The new owner of the mine, the Węglokoks company, provides the current data of the mine on the website http://weglokokskraj.pl/pl/nasza-firma/kwk-bobrek .
Coordinates: 50 ° 20 ′ 44 ″ N , 18 ° 52 ′ 39.1 ″ E