End of the road for tin
Page 6
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• Hard-pressed Cornish haulage firms and owner-drivers have been hit by the closure of the county's two remaining tin mines: Wheal Jane in Truro and South Crofty in Camborne.
Richards & Osborne at Fraddon, near Bodmin employs three artics carrying 700 tonnes of broken ore a day from South Crofty to Wheal Jane. It also hauls some finished ore to the docks at Truro and Falmouth.
The company is contracted to Carnon Holdings, which owns both mines, but is also a general haulage operation running 38 vehicles, many of them tippers employed in the china clay industry. According to director Mark Richards, the tin mining contract accounts for no more than 10% of the firm's business. It hauled tin ore to a smelting plant at Hull until a leukaemia scare shut the plant down. Owner-drivers employed by shipping companies to fetch container loads to the docks will also lose out in an area where hauliers are feeling the effects of the recession.
Some are employed to haul ore north to industrial centres like Sheffield.
Carnon Holdings is winding the mines down gradually and although all 415 miners are redundant, it will be some weeks before the last of the ore is processed. The company hopes to keep the mines in a state of "care and maintenance" in case it should be possible to re-open one or both of them. A source close to Carnon refused to confirm that Wheal Jane is to be allowed to flood.
It was a Department of Trade and Industry decision which spelt the closure of both mines — the DTI refused to offer more cash support following loans of £23.4m since 1986.