Study of mine and natural stone in the province of Kütahya

Kütahya is a province that is generally supposed to be rich in terms of undergroundsources. The aim of this study is to define the potential of mine and natural stone in Kütahya,the enterprises in the mining and marble industry, available licenses and active quarries and toput forward suggestions for the development of the sector.Coal, boron mine, magnesite and silver mine are economically operated. It has beendetermined that the investments of marble, travertine, chromium and antimony havedevelopment potential. It is required to do research and studying of the ceramic raw materials.Marble and travertine ore beds which are known as having economic reserves in thecounty of Altıntaş have not been cultivated. In recent years, owing to the increase in the exportsof marble and travertine, the expected plant investments in these quarries.Mining works in the province have been carried out heavily by the public organisations.Coal is produced by Turkish Coal Board (TCB) and boron mineral is produced by the GeneralDirectorate of Eti Mining Enterprises. Although boron mines is cultivated by the public onaccount of legal reasons, there is no such obligation for coal. Now there is an ongoing decreasein private sector coal mining. The most important reason is the bad quality of the coal.Therefore, this disadvantage could be removed with the construction of the washing-plant thatwill appeal to producers more than one.Silver and magnesite which are known to be running efficiently are operated by theprivate sector. Yet the remarkable point is that these are not the new investments but thefacilities achieved by the privatization. Gold, the existence of which is not seen in the sources,has two running licenses taken by a company. Apart from that, for barite, sulphur, talc,manganeze and graphite, copper-lead-zinc and iron, the studies of searching and developingshould be done.Key words : Boron mines, ceramic raw materials, coal, industrial raw materials,Kutahya, marble, mine, natural stone, silver, travertine.