Published : 2024-09-01

On September 1, 1984, the first phase of the Huolinhe (霍林河) South Open-pit Coal Mine was completed and put into operation.

The Huolinhe mining area is located in the Kerqin grassland in the eastern part of Inner Mongolia, at the southwestern foot of the Daxinganling Range.

The coal field covers an area of 540 square kilometres, with 13.3 billion tonnes of high-quality lignite suitable for thermal power generation. The coal mines in this region have shallow overburden layers and simple geological structures, making them conducive to open-pit mining.

The famous South Open-pit Mine is one of the five major open-pit coal mines built during the "Sixth Five-Year Plan" period.

It was started in April 1976 and is China's first self-designed and self-built modern open-pit coal mine, with a designed annual output of 3 million tonnes and a construction area of 760,000 square metres.

With the continual operation of new and expanded projects, as of 2017, the coal output of the Huolinhe North Open-pit Mine has reached 9.99 million tonnes, and the coal output of the South Open-pit Mine has reached 17.99 million tonnes.

The Huolinhe mining area signifies a new era of modernisation in the construction of China's open-pit coal mining, and it also provides valuable experience for the construction of other open-pit coal mines in the country.