Labour celebrates mine closure leading to 200 job losses
The south Wales valleys would have had a scattered hill farming population without coal, are we heading backwards in Wales as far as enterprise new industry.
Commenting on the news that the UK’s largest open cast coal mine is being closed, leaving nearly 200 employees redundant, Welsh Conservative Shadow Climate Minister, Janet Finch-Saunders MS said:
“I am genuinely concerned that now the supply from Ffos-y-Fran is lost, we will simply become even more reliant on imports.
“I have been reliably informed that the mine produces anthracite which burns a lot cleaner than what we are importing.
“Labour and Plaid Cymru need to recognise that it is completely irresponsible to pursue policies that offshore carbon footprints to other, usually far poorer and less developed nations, than ours.
Far better for The Port Talbot Steelworks’ to source coal from Australia, which is 9,000 miles away (14,484 km), Brazil – 5,400 miles away (8,690 km), and Russia – 3,700 miles (5,954 km) away.
While coal production and use in Wales and the UK has dropped dramatically since the middle of the last century, in 2019, the UK used 7.9 million tonnes of coal. While UK domestic coal production was at a record low of 2.9 million tonnes, the UK still imports coal from Russia, North America, Colombia and Australia.
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