A pit at the epicentre of the battleground during the 1980s miners' strike is set to reopen with the creation of 400 jobs, as soaring coal prices begin to mark a renaissance for the once neardead
north Midlands and Yorkshire mining industry.

UK Coal, the stock market-listed rump of the old British Coal, said today a doubling of the global coal price over the last year has seen the closed Harworth Colliery, in north Nottinghamshire, look economically viable once more.

Once geological surveys are complete, the plan is for Harworth to reopen later this year with 150 workers — a fraction of the thousands of miners employed there in its heyday — but ramping up to
400 jobs within months.

That would take UK Coal's workforce up to 3500 as the business concentrates on servicing the giant local coal-fired power stations of Drax, Britain's
largest power plant, and facilities such as Ratcliffe and Cottam, owned by E.On and EDF.

The group today reported a quadrupling in profits in 2007, to £69 million as its previously loss-making deep mines went into the black later in the year and its surface mining pits' earnings soared 16-fold. The results come despite UK Coal being unable to take advantage of soaring coal prices tied into historic supply contracts which are unlikely to unwind for another three years.

Achieved prices rose 15% last year and are expected to rise only another 10% this year.
UK Coal is developing thousands of acres of mining industry brownfield sites.

Development is due to turn into construction next year of 25,000 new homes and 30 million square feet of commercial space. Despite the dive in property prices, the five-year valuation on UK Coal's property interests has now been raised to £1 billion, from a previously estimated £800 million.

“We are moving rapidly ahead on all fronts,” said chief executive Jon Lloyd. The group made £4 million profits, up a third, from generating electricity from coal mine methane.