(Minews) - Steel producer ArcelorMittal's Polish arm said on Wednesday it might reduce coal supplies from Polish miner JSW to limit the risk of delivery disruptions if workers' protests at JSW recur.
Coal production has stopped at JSW as a result of a miners' strike, which started on Jan.28, hitting ArcelorMittal, one of its biggest customers, which ceased to receive a significant chunk of supplies.
Earlier this month, ArcelorMittal said it had secured supplies for its Polish coking plants from oversees which helped it maintain output for another few days.
"Due to this situation we will probably have to look at the size of supplies from particular directions," Sylwia Winiarek, ArcelorMittal Polska spokeswoman said. "JSW is our biggest partner, who delivers more than 50 percent of the coal we use."
"It cannot be excluded that in order to minimise the operational risk we will reduce the scale of orders from JSW," Winiarek said.
ArcelorMittal's coking plant in Zdzieszowice, southern Poland, is the largest of its kind in Europe. The company's steel plants account for 70 percent of Poland's steel production capacity.
Coal output at JSW, which is the European Union's largest coking coal miner, stopped at the end of January when miners' went on strike over cost-cutting.
JSW said the production outage translates into almost 30 million zlotys ($8.06 million) of lost income per day.
