The Czech Coal Group has launched a project called Coal Safari this year and between July and October 2009, 800 visitors from all parts of the Czech Republic joined in the field trips. During this period of time, 44 excursions took place, and off road vehicles covered 1,600 kilometers with the participants at the Litvínovská uhelná and Vršanská uhelná extraction companies.

The launch of the trial operation of the Coal Safari project was the Group’s response to the continuously strong interest in trips to the mining sites. It wanted to make them even more accessible to the public, offering visitors an opportunity to see the two companies’ coal extraction operations and equipment and also the progress in landscape restoration after brown coal mining.

The public will also have this opportunity to visit the surface mines, unique works of engineering, and see the results of reclamation next year. Coal Safari field trips will be started in April and both laymen and experts will be able to use this offer until October.

Registration of visitors will begin in March 2010 via the Czech Coal Group’s website again, on which detailed information will be posted. Already now, the list of applicants whom the extraction companies could not accommodate this year for reasons of capacity and time contains hundreds of names.

The Czech Coal Group includes Czech Coal, a trader in energy commodities, mainly brown coal, electrical energy and greenhouse gas emissions allowances, and Litvínovská uhelná, which manages the largest coal deposit in the Czech Republic, Vršanská uhelná, whose coal reserves within the mining limits will last until 2058, Czech Coal Services, which provides shared services to the extraction companies, and a number of other service companies. REN Power CZ, a leading Czech investor in renewable energy sources, and FitCraft Production, a prominent Czech manufacturer of photovoltaic systems, were included into the Group this year.