Is there any info on how long the reserves at Boulby will last?
It's a little hard to say but there was a piece in the BBC last year that indicated decades or even centuries of reserves of rock salt which is one of their main exports:
Opened as a potash mine, the rock salt was produced as the miners pushed through the deposits to get to the fertiliser product.
Although the facility now mines a different fertiliser - polyhalite - Boulby still produces hundreds of thousands of tonnes of rock salt.
The exact amount it produces varies, depending on how harsh a winter the country is experiencing.
According to National Highways, about 215,000 tonnes of salt is used on average each winter on motorways and major A-roads.
The good news for drivers and pedestrians is that there is no shortage of rock salt available at Boulby.
According to Mr Edwards [ICL Boulby Chief Geologist], "we have resources to last us many decades, if not centuries".
Boulby mine, near Staithes, supplies about half the de-icing rock salt used on the country's roads.
www.bbc.co.uk
And that's just the rock salt side, they make the money these days on polyhalite (like the Woodsmith Mine will if it comes off) and they report having plenty of that on hand as well:
Recent Discoveries
Our exploration geologists have identified and are continuing to discover an abundance of polyhalite reserves, our new multi-nutrient mineral that we have now turned our attention towards. Our polyhalite is safe to mine and is present in sufficient quantities to invest in the development of its efficient extraction. So far, we have an estimated 1 billion tonnes of polyhalite resources, some of which we are currently mining, making ICL UK the sole producer of polyhalite worldwide.
In 2017, we reached a landmark of 1 million tonnes of polyhalite mined at ICL Boulby and we’ve got big plans to come. We’re the only ones mining it globally and with our expertise, we plan to mine 1 million tonnes per year by 2020.
Mining the future in a long-term sustainable way ICL Boulby has an impressive track-record in responsibly operating the deepest mine in the UK and we are developing ways to ensure good stewardship of the mine while guaranteeing the project is around for decades to come. Our exploration...
www.icl-uk.uk
Judging from the dates given that's probably from some years ago but I can't think of a reason to think that their estimated reserves are particularly far wide of the mark!
Reckon Boulby will be in operation for some time to come yet, at least as long as it's economical to do so. After all I believe that there are technically centuries of reserves of coal in Wales, Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and elsewhere but it's not economic to mine it so down there it stays...
Also Skinningrove Steel facility to consider.
Indeed, it doesn't generate huge flows of traffic but normally a couple of trains (ish) a day of steel slab and empty wagons the other way (of course once upon a time that slab came from much more local steelworks, but these days it's Scunthorpe I think). I don't think any final products are exported from there by rail, that all goes by road.
On a typical day the branch sees fifteen or so freights Monday to Saturday (usually nothing on Sunday or maybe one or two). Crag Hall S.B. on RTT will show the traffic serving both the mine and the steelworks. It's a reasonable flow of traffic to be honest! Whether it's valuable enough to spend a lot of money on cutting into the side of Warsett Hill sometime in the future to pull the line back from the edge of the cliffs I don't know...
www.thenorthernecho.co.uk
