JULIAN, W.Va. — Alpha Natural Resources and its affiliates announced Tuesday that the company has emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
The reorganized Alpha will result in a privately held company operating 18 mines and eight preparation plants in West Virginia and Kentucky.
“The new Alpha will take those principles that made Alpha successful– that being priority will be into safety for our employees in the communities we serve, we’ll be good stewards of the environment,” said reorganized company CEO David Stetson. “We have multiple agreement with the various states and federal government of how we proceed forward with our reclamation activities.”
Stetson had a big goal for mining coal in 2017, pointing out that the industry is still hurting but was beginning to “strengthen somewhat, although it’s still very depressed.”
“We’ll also continue to be a low-cost producer of metallurgical and thermal coal. I’m expecting that we’ll have production in excess of 10 million tons in 2017 coming up,” he said.
The new company will have a much more solid financial foundation, Stetson said.
“We’re going to have very little debt load with the company, and as a result of the plan of reorganization, the company will be left with adequate liquidity to weather the storms that we’re experiencing in this coal environment.”
Stetson is a veteran coal executive with broad experience in the sector, most recently holding positions with Trinity Coal, RAAM Global Energy and JW Resources.
Alpha and its affiliates will have offices in Julian and Kingsport, Tenn., supporting operations at 14 mining complexes in central Appalachia.