From Thursday, December 14, a train will again run to Vareš, and the reason for this is the imminent start of the exploitation of mineral resources in this part of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The train will run from Vareš to Podlugovi, i.e. to the port of Ploče. The drive from Vareš to Podlugovi will take one hour, while it will take eight hours to Ploče. There will be five weekly trains to Ploče.
The railway from Vareš to Podlugovi, which is 24 kilometers long, was last in use in 1992. The cleaning of this section of the railway is contractually assigned to the British company Adriatic Metals, which will exploit silver, zinc and lead in the area of Vareš.
Manual cleaning began on June 1 this year and was completed in five weeks, followed by machine cleaning that took four weeks.
On August 7, Adriatic Metals handed over the railway to the Railways of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina for technical maintenance/renovation, which they stated is still ongoing due to delays. It is planned that these works will be completed by the end of this month. The produced ore concentrates will be transported by rail from Vareš to Ploče, and then to foundries throughout Europe and beyond.
The Vareška Railway was built during the Austro-Hungarian rule as a narrow-gauge line of the Bosnian Railway (Bosnabahn). Bosanski Brod, Doboj, Zavidovići, Zenica, Lašva, Podlugovi, Vogošća and Sarajevo were connected to it.
It was crucial for the connection with Vareš as a mining center, i.e. industrial plant for the production of iron.
After the Second World War, it continued to operate until the end of March 1953, when it was officially suspended. Its role was taken over by the standard-gauge railway line Podlugovi – Droškovac (Vareš).
When it comes to Adriatic Metals’ investment, it is among the largest foreign investments in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Last year alone, this company invested 254 million BAM, which is 25 percent of total foreign investments in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The start of production is planned for the beginning of next year. It is expected to process 800,000 tons of ore annually, KLix.ba reports.
