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Daw Mill...behind the wire

Located at Arley, near Coventry in the West Midlands, Daw Mill is Britain's biggest coal producer, mining a five-metre thick section of the Warwickshire Thick seam some 750 metres below the rolling Warwickshire countryside. A natural extension of the former Kingsbury and Dexter collieries which worked the coal in the northern end of the Warwickshire coalfield, the present Daw Mill shafts, 558m and 553m deep, were sunk between 1956-59 and 1969-71. In 1983, a drift (an inclined tunnel) linking underground workings with the surface was completed, enabling Daw Mill to increase production capacity by removing the bottleneck of winding coal up the shafts. Current investment plans involve the expenditure of around £35m in 2004/5 on accessing new reserves, the purchase of new coal face equipment and improvements to the colliery coal preparation plant. Output from Daw Mill, which employs 540 people, is used in all markets - domestic, industrial and power stations.