Active exhaust ventilation shaft of the ZG Polkowice-Sieroszowice copper-silver mine, located near the village of Sobin on the southern edge of Polkowice.
Szyb P-VII is an exhaust ventilation shaft of the ZG Polkowice-Sieroszowice copper-silver mine, operated by KGHM Polska Miedź S.A. in Lower Silesia, Poland. Situated in the Sobin locality on the outskirts of Polkowice along the road towards Sobin off Kopalniana street, the shaft was constructed as part of the Kopalnia Polkowice infrastructure, which began development in 1962 and entered production in 1968. P-VII served as a ventilation shaft of the Kopalnia Polkowice until the mine's merger with Sieroszowice in 1996, after which it became part of the unified ZG Polkowice-Sieroszowice.
The shaft carries used air out of the mine workings and is listed as one of three exhaust ventilation shafts serving the ZG Polkowice-Sieroszowice section of the KGHM network. A Mountain Rescue Station (Stacja Ratownictwa Górniczego) is located adjacent to the shaft. Corrosion of the tubing-segment bolt heads in the shaft lining was observed from the late 1990s, a condition also recorded at comparable exhaust ventilation shafts across the KGHM system.
Szyb P-VII is a ventilation shaft constructed as part of the development of the Kopalnia Polkowice, whose construction began in 1962 in the Polkowice area of Lower Silesia. The mine worked a polymetallic copper-silver deposit in Zechstein copper-bearing shales, at depths requiring the use of ground-freezing techniques during shaft construction to manage the heavily water-saturated overburden. The Polkowice mine entered initial exploitation on 19 July 1968, and P-VII was built as part of the mine's distributed shaft network to serve the ventilation requirements of the underground workings.
The shaft is located in the Sobin locality on the southern edge of Polkowice, on the road out of the city towards Sobin along Kopalniana street, where it stands alongside a Mountain Rescue Station (Stacja Ratownictwa Górniczego). This peripheral location is consistent with the function of an exhaust ventilation shaft, which must draw used air out of the mine from a position separated from the intake shafts. The mine reached a production capacity of 4.5 million tonnes of ore per year within four years of opening, subsequently rising to 7.5 million tonnes.
In 1996, the Kopalnia Polkowice was merged with the neighbouring Kopalnia Sieroszowice to form the Zakłady Górnicze Polkowice-Sieroszowice. Under this combined structure, P-VII continued in service and is identified as one of the three exhaust ventilation shafts assigned to the Polkowice-Sieroszowice section of the KGHM ventilation system, alongside szyby SG-2 and SW-3. During operational inspection of shaft linings across the KGHM network, corrosion of the bolt heads connecting the tubing segments in the P-VII shaft was identified in the late 1990s, among the first such observations across the system.
The shaft has a segmental lining with tubing construction, and the corrosion findings contributed to a wider survey and monitoring programme for exhaust ventilation shaft linings across KGHM. P-VII remains an active component of the ZG Polkowice-Sieroszowice ventilation system. The mine as a whole currently operates ten shafts and extracts approximately 12 million tonnes of polymetallic ore per year.