Poland's largest coal miner PGG may need slightly less subsidy funding than anticipated
Poland's largest coal miner PGG may need slightly less subsidy funding this year than it has been anticipated, the company's CEO Leszek Pietraszek told a panel at Energy Days conference in Katowice.
"In May 2023, when submitting the document to Brussels, it was designed that PGG would produce slightly more than 22 million tonnes of coal and sell about 22 million tonnes of coal. In March, less than a year later, it turned out after verification with customers, [Poland's grid operator] PSE, etc., that we would sell more or less 17 million tonnes of coal, which is 5 million tonnes less than the company was prepared for," Pietraszek said.
"(...) 5 million tonnes of coal is not a decrease, it is a bump. It results in a decline in revenues by more than 40 percent, it is not hundreds of millions but billions of zlotys of lower revenues," he added.
As Pietraszek pointed out, the decline in revenues is the result of a significant drop in coal prices and reduced demand.
The CEO continued that based on these parameters, it was projected that PGG would need slightly more than PLN 6 billion (EUR 1.4 bln) in subsidies to reduce production capacity.
"We have managed with a huge effort during the current year to reduce costs, work on revenue items. (...) As a result, PGG will fit into the subsidy, and even - we are convinced - a little less public funding will be needed than the reported requirement," CEO Pietraszek assessed.
He reported that there is no risk that PGG will not make payments to external parties in the near future.
pel/ ao/ nl/