The $US65 million Wyoming County plant, part of Massey’s Marianna property, will feature two 10,000t clean coal silos and a 25,000t raw coal stockpile area.

Associated costs for the Pineville plant, which should be completed in the third quarter of next year, have been included in the producer’s 2010 and 2011 capital expenditures outlook.

The first operation to send coal to the facility will be Massey’s Guyandotte mine, which produces high-quality, low-volatility metallurgical product from the Sewell seam currently under development.

By 2012, Pineville will also process the coal from two continuous miner sections contiguous to Guyandotte, which contains a 45 million ton reserve base.

“With the global met market expected to remain strong, this new investment will help us meet customer needs and is part of our previously announced metallurgical coal expansion initiative,” Massey chairman Don Blankenship said.

The company announced last week that it had restarted operations at its 1200tph Logan County, West Virginia preparation facility, which had been destroyed in an August 2009 fire.

The former Bandmill plant is now called Zigmond Processing after longtime Massey employee Richard Zigmond.

The facility, which restarted earlier this month, serves the producer’s Logan County resource group, which is made up of four underground metallurgical mines and two surface steam coal operations.

Zigmond processes coal via a heavy media vessel, heavy media cyclone, reflux classifiers and froth flotation. The plant will also have a new batch-weigh flood loadout capable of loading 15,000t trains in four hours.