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The Taft deal gives Walter subsidiary United Land Corporation (ULC) an extra 600,000 tons of production a year and coal reserves of about 4.3 million tons, including 500,000t of metallurgical coal.
ULC expects to begin mining the Taft reserves next year which will lift its 2009 annual production to 2Mt.
Taft currently operates a surface steam and industrial coal mine in central Alabama, 40 miles northwest of Birmingham.
Walter chairman Michael T Tokarz said the Taft acquisition and recent expansion in the company’s current operations had given it a substantial footprint in the southern Appalachian coal region.
When other Walter operations are combined with its Jim Walter Resources, Walter expects to have about 11Mt of coal production in 2010.
Walter also announced this week the successful start-up of a second longwall operation at its Mine No. 7 Southwest “A” project.
The longwall is expected to add about 1Mt to production output for 2008.
