Ross said in an interview Thursday that his year-old International Coal Group Inc. invested more than $135 million to update equipment and make other safety improvements at its mines, including a $40 million advance on its purchase of Anker West Virginia Mining Co. so that improvements could be made quickly.
''We are extremely safety oriented," Ross said. ''And while it is certainly true that we try to run efficient operations, first of all we have never, in any company in which we have invested, ever declined one penny of either expense or capex [capital expenditure] for any safety activity."
Ross, 68, led the group of investors who formed ICG in May 2004 by buying most of the assets of bankrupt coal operators Anker and Horizon Natural Resources. Anker included Sago Mine, where the explosion trapped the miners 260 feet underground.
Ross is a master bargain hunter, having formed Cleveland-based International Steel Group Inc. in 2002 after buying the remnants of bankrupt LTV Corp., then several other bankrupt US steelmakers. When that industry was in the midst of a rebirth, he sold ISG to Dutch steelmaker Ispat International NV and LNM Holdings NV Now for $4.5 billion last year, forming the world's largest steel company, Mittal Steel Co.
Like steel, mining is booming again because of the demand for coal-powered energy. And like mining, steel is a physical industry where generations of families have worked in mills, many more than 100 years old with aging equipment and the dangers of blast furnaces, molten steel, and equipment that could crush a worker in an instant.
''We want to work safe and get out of there in one piece to get home to our families," said longtime steelworker Eddie Reust who worked for ISG in Cleveland.
Ross's company made things better in the mills, he said: ''It wasn't just show and go. They're much more safety conscious than LTV."
