American Resources Corporation (NASDAQ:AREC) announced it has started selling and shipping metallurgical carbon from its recently opened Carnegie 1 mine.
In a statement, the Indiana-based company said the mine is currently running seven days a week and adding additional production and maintenance shifts.
The product is going to a customer base using the carbon for steelmaking in international and domestic markets, added American Resources.
READ: American Resources upgrades its processing facility at Perry County Resources complex
Carbon extracted from the Carnegie mining complex is transported to the nearby McCoy Elkhorn complex, where it is processed, loaded and shipped to domestic and international metallurgical customers, the company said.
"It's always a rewarding day for our team when we see our efforts bear fruit by getting our first Carnegie mine reopened, as well as our McCoy Elkhorn facility, up and running and now shipping carbon to our steel customers,” CEO Mark Jensen told investors.
“We are in a very fortunate spot to be expanding production of high-quality, steel-making carbon in a market that is seeing constrained supply struggling to meet worldwide infrastructure demands. The changes our team has made at this complex are focused on safety, cost and efficiency.”
Decades of mine life
Jensen said that even though the Carnegie 1 mine was in production briefly before the pandemic began in earnest in the Kentucky area, the mine is “essentially new,” allowing American Resources to efficiently produce a quality product with decades of mine life.
“Our Carnegie 2 mine will subsequently be brought online in short order as we have already invested the development capital and have secured the contract mining company to operate this new mine which will access the same boundary of carbon from a different direction as our Carnegie 1 mine,” Jensen added.
The company said it is also planning to develop it Carnegie 3 mine and its Carnegie Surface mine to support the complex's overall production at the facility, and evaluating upgrading the McCoy Elkhorn processing plant to produce a mini stoker industrial product for the specialty alloy metal marketplace given that market's consistently strong demand.
American Resources is focused on the extraction and processing of metallurgical carbon, a key ingredient in steelmaking, rare earth minerals for the electrification market, and reprocessed metal to be recycled. American Resources has a growing portfolio of operations in the Central Appalachian basin of eastern Kentucky and southwest Virginia where premium quality metallurgical carbon and rare earth mineral deposits are concentrated.
Contact Angela at angela@proactiveinvestors.com
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