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KATOWICE, Poland, May 10 (Reuters) - Poland's biggest coal miner PGG PGE.WA expects to report a net profit of about 400 million zlotys ($103 million) in 2017 after a net loss of 300 million zloty last year, Chief Executive Tomasz Rogala said on Wednesday.
PGG, previously known as Kompania Weglowa, faced collapse in 2015 due to a slump in coal prices and rising production costs. The firm survived with financial aid from state-run utilities and a rebound in coal prices. expect that this year PGG will have 400 million zlotys net profit," Rogala told reporters at a presentation of the firm's strategy at the European Economic Congress in Katowice, southern Poland, the heart of the coal mining industry.
PGG planned to double earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) to 2.8 billion zlotys ($722 million) by 2030, he said.
PGG, which in March agreed to take over state-owned coal miner KHW, plans to dig about an average of 30 million tonnes of coal a year by 2030, with production costs falling 15 percent to 203 zlotys per tonne, Rogala said.
The ruling Law and Justice party (PiS), which says coal will be Poland's main energy source for years, won the 2015 parliamentary election partly on promises to rescue the sector.
Restructuring coal mines has been managed mainly by listed state-controlled firms with cash, such as PGNiG PGN.WA , PGE PGE.WA , Enea ENAE.WA and Energa ENGP.WA .
But these companies also face challenges such as falling electricity prices and rising costs of CO2 emissions.
This has prompted private investors in the industry to criticise some of the government's rescue plans. Shares in Energa fell by 28 percent in 2016, when the company decided to back PGG and revive a project to build coal-fuelled power plant.
Analysts have said a big factor weighing on the utilities valuation was government policies that resulted in the companies' bigger involvement in coal.
($1 = 3.8794 zlotys)