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Ffos-y-fran Land Reclamation Scheme

Merthyr Tydfil, Italy

Ffos-y-fran Land Reclamation Scheme

The Ffos-y-fran Land Reclamation Scheme was a major opencast coaling operation to the north-east of Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales. It was the last major opencast mine in the UK, and it shut down in November 2023 with restoration planned to start in 2024. The contracted excavator/reclaiming company w

as Merthyr (South Wales) Ltd (previously called Miller Argent), which is owned by Gwent Investments Limited, a privately owned family business based in South Wales. The scheme development was the last part of the East Merthyr Reclamation scheme, and planned to extract 10 million tonnes of coal over 15 years starting from 2007, with the intention of using part of the revenue to redevelop the current former industrial workings into residential and recreational use. The opencast coal mine has provoked criticism at a local and national scale, including objections on health and safety grounds as to the close proximity of housing to the site, concerns of the despoiling of the landscape, and global concerns of the contribution of coal to climate change. A number of protests have occurred on and around the site. The license of the site expired in September 2022; an application for a 9-month extension...

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