Video: Inside Marblaegis Mine, East Leake (Pictures: British Gypsum)
A major gypsum mine which lies beneath a large part of south Nottinghamshire has been granted permission to operate for an extra 17 years.
Owners of Marblaegis Mine, close to East Leake, applied for permission to keep it running up until February 2042, instead of its current end date of December 2025.
Run by British Gypsum, the site is one of the UK’s main sources of the mineral, which is used in plaster and plasterboard.
Demand for the product from the mine is expected to increase because the UK is phasing out coal-fired power stations, which produce a form gypsum as a by-product
Marblaegis Mine covers around 3,852 hectares below ground surrounding East Leake, although only part of it in the area of Costock accounts for most of its output.
Nottinghamshire County Council’s initial report on the application recommended the extension was approved, because there is still so much rock below ground and the increase will protect jobs.
The authority’s planning committee gave the extension the green light on Tuesday (February 21).
“Marblaegis Mine is critical to British Gypsum’s operations with the mine supplying gypsum to a local plaster and plasterboard industrial works which directly supplies the UK construction sector,” the authority’s report on the mine read.
Gypsum is currently extracted at the site at a rate of 250,000 tonnes a year despite the mine having an installed capacity of more than 600,000 tonnes a year.
The mine output is expected to rise sharply over the next two years to reach its peak capacity towards the end of 2018, with a maximum projected output of around 600,000 tonnes a year being achieved by October 2018.
Although only 26 full-time staff work on the mine itself, British Gypsum’s plaster and plasterboard works close by above ground has 264 staff and 125 contractors.
The report adds Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust has expressed some concern that the extension would delay plans to restore land above ground back to nature.
British Gypsum has responded by agreeing to reassess an existing restoration scheme for another entrance to the mine nearby, known as the ‘Silver Seal’ entrance, which is no longer used.
The company is a subsidiary of French multinational Saint-Gobain, head quartered in Paris.
The firm’s minerals and estates manager Jeremy Elvins said: “The phasing out of coal-fired power stations means we have reducing access to ‘synthetic gypsum’ or desulphogypsum, also called DSG, an important by-product we have been recycling into plasterboard since the early 1990s.
“We need to counteract this reduction in DSG output by increasing supply from mined and quarried natural gypsum as well as continuing to support plasterboard recycling programmes.
“This will help ensure we can meet growing demand for British-made plasterboard and plaster products within important national construction projects such as schools, hospitals and housing.”
