Coronado Buchanan details half‑billion‑dollar expansion and plans to begin mining in Tazewell County in early 2025

Kerry Harwood, manager of engineering for the Coronado Buchanan No. 1 Mine, told the Tazewell County Board of Supervisors on Nov. 5 that the mine’s footprint spans Buchanan, Russell and Tazewell counties and that company plans call for development in Tazewell beginning this year and longwall operations there in the first quarter of 2025.

Harwood said the operation now runs two longwall panels and expects to operate both for seven to eight years before scaling back to one. He described the company’s plan to duplicate its production hoist capacity, add a raw‑coal ground storage facility to increase storage from roughly 8,000 raw tons to about 150,000 raw tons, and upgrade the preparation plant from roughly 1,300 raw tons per hour to about 2,000 raw tons per hour to handle the increased feed.

The presentation listed new ventilation shafts that must be drilled to accommodate expansion to the east and south, and Harwood said the company recently reactivated and deepened a previously idled ventilation shaft (bottom now about 200 feet below sea level) and is installing skips. He estimated the hoist expansion at about $75 million and said the company bought a new longwall system priced at roughly $115 million; total expansion spending is “pushing the half a billion dollars,” he said.

Harwood told supervisors that panel yields vary with seam thickness; a single longwall rectangle could produce roughly 1.5 million to 2 million tons depending on conditions, while development sections are much smaller and may produce in the low hundreds of thousands of tons. He added that the timetable and pace remain market driven.

Board members asked for Harwood’s tonnage slides and Harwood agreed to provide scrubbed copies after internal review. Harwood also said the company expects to add roughly 50–60 employees before reaching the previous peak workforce, and that many hires will come from Tazewell County.

The company introduced Quentin Justice as the mine planner who can answer further technical questions. Harwood said certain expansion construction elements—ventilation shafts, duplicate hoists and the new preparation plant—have multi‑year schedules; one of the hoist projects is anticipated to come online in a May–June timeframe the following year.

The board did not take any formal action on the presentation; Harwood offered to return with a more detailed briefing during next year’s budget cycle.