Ann: Change in substantial holding, page-7

In northern Thuringia, the region is to become a major potash location again. Several test drillings have been applied for this year in the so-called Ohm Mountains in Eichsfeld. The company Südharz Kali GmbH wants to produce at least one million tons of fertilizer per year there from 2026. According to CEO Jason Wilkinson, up to 500 jobs could be created. There are also hundreds of jobs in service and supplier companies. The mine will not pollute the environment and residents, he told this newspaper. They want to divert all of the overburden with the brine to former pits in the region. The transport of the potash salt is to be handled primarily by rail. "There will be no dumps and no salty rivers in northern Thuringia - and no congested roads," said Wilkinson. "We guarantee that." The Ohmgebirge extends over an area of almost 25 square kilometers near Kirchworbis and Haynrode; it borders on the former pits Bischofferode and Sollstedt. According to the company, up to 325 million tons of potash are stored at a depth between 650 and 850 meters. The mining rights belong to the Australian-German parent company Davenport Resources. It has acquired other, significantly larger deposits between Nordhausen and Mühlhausen and east of Bad Langensalza, which it intends to exploit over the next few decades. In total, it is up to 5.3 billion tons over an area of 659 square kilometers. Südharz Kali wants to partially reactivate old mining plans from GDR times. The planned test drillings in the Ohm Mountains are more of a formality for the company. "Hundreds of drillings were already carried out in the region during the GDR era, and the data from that time has been preserved and excellent," said Davenport's spokesman for the board, Chris Gilchrist. Only the drill cores were lost. The former GDR potash combine, which incidentally was called Kalisüdharz AG for a short time after the fall of the Wall, "did an excellent job". The feasibility study should be completed by 2023. For the mine they want to use areas that have already been developed industrially, explained Gilchrist. The salt should be extracted using the most modern methods. There will be no explosions. A partner of Südharz Kali is Kutec AG from Sondershausen, which emerged from the research institute of the former combine. She developed the concept for the storage of brine in the disused Springen mine for the potash group K + S. Thanks to the mining rights, the new company could in a few decades be as big as the Kassel group, which took over part of the Thuringian plants in the Werra district in the early 1990s. The other pits - including Sonderhausen, Bleicherode, Bischofferode or Sollstedt - were closed at that time.