Massey Energy, the largest coal company in Central Appalachia, has acquired the assets and permits of the Marmet Dock river barge loading facility from Kanawha River Terminals.
Located at mile post 69 on the Kanawha River near Marmet, WV, this strategic facility is convenient to Massey's Route 3 operations, as well as its Inman, Black Castle and Republic resource groups, it says.
This active dock facility boasts state-of-the-art infrastructure and ground storage capacity of 300,000t. The annual loading capacity of the facility, as currently configured, is in the range of 5 to 7 mt.
"We are very pleased with our acquisition of the Marmet Dock facility," said Massey's president, Baxter Phillips.
"The addition of these assets will provide us with key advantages in our strategy to expand our sales of high quality metallurgical coal. We can use this facility to blend different types of coal from several of our resource groups, thereby creating custom coal products that command premium prices."
"We expect to realise significant savings in transportation costs by shipping more coal on the river versus shipping by rail," Phillips added.
"Ultimately the tons we blend and ship through Marmet can be loaded more efficiently on export vessels."
In 2009 Massey shipped approximately 8 mt of coal on the inland waterway system to both domestic and export customers.
The Marmet Dock facility is expected to enhance the Company's ability to serve an expanding domestic and international customer base. In particular, Marmet is expected to be helpful in boosting exports through the Gulf of Mexico.
