In 2012, about 1100 people were employed at Solid Energy’s Stockton open-cast mine but only three years later it had dropped to 225 as coal exports to China and elsewhere dwindled and the price of coal fell. The lower volumes of coal transported by rail to Lyttelton meant train drivers lost their jobs too. Government-owned Solid Energy had invested heavily in expansion before the Global Financial Crisis and could no longer pay its interest bill so the mine was put on the market in 2015, which is when this book is set. In early 2016, Solid Energy announced that a decision on whether to close Stockton, if it was not sold, would be made by mid-year. At the last minute it was bought by a group of businesses that have ties to Westport. They took over the mine in 2017.
Further south, Spring Creek near Greymouth, also owned by Solid Energy, was not so lucky. It failed to find a buyer and the mine was sealed and flooded in 2017/2018. It was believed to be the last underground coalmine in the country.
New Zealand coalmines are not the only ones to have closed, or partly closed, around the world. In December 2015, Britain’s very last underground coalminers came topside for the final time at the Kellingley mine in North Yorkshire. In Australia, Queensland’s Isaac Plains, a coking coalmine like Stockton, sold for just $1 in 2015. Three years earlier it had been valued at $A860 million. More than 4000 coalmining jobs were lost in Australia between 2014 and 2016. Mines have closed and jobs lost also in the United States – in West Virginia, Kentucky, Colorado, Indiana and Utah.