Active personnel and materials shaft of the Polkowice-Sieroszowice copper mine, named Święty Jakub and serving as a working industrial installation.
Szyb SG-1 is a personnel and materials shaft forming part of Zakłady Górnicze Polkowice-Sieroszowice, one of three active underground copper mines operated by KGHM Polska Miedź S.A. in Lower Silesia, Poland. The shaft was sunk between 1979 and 1990 by Przedsiębiorstwo Budowy Kopalń PeBeKa and was the 26th shaft constructed in the Legnicko-Głogowski Okręg Miedziowy copper district. It reaches a depth of 1,050 metres and functions as a zjazdowo-materiałowy shaft, meaning it handles the transport of personnel and materials underground.
In the 50th anniversary year of the discovery of the Lubin-Sieroszowice copper deposit, the shaft was formally named Święty Jakub — Saint James — acknowledging its location on the Dolnośląska Droga Świętego Jakuba pilgrimage route. A surface air-conditioning station with a cooling capacity of 15 MW was installed at the shaft between 2009 and 2011. The mine of which it forms a part was created in 1996 through the merger of the former Kopalnia Polkowice and Kopalnia Sieroszowice.
Szyb SG-1 belongs to the Sieroszowice section of Zakłady Górnicze Polkowice-Sieroszowice, a branch of KGHM Polska Miedź S.A. The deposit exploited by this mine was first identified on 23 March 1957, when a drilling team led by geologist Jan Wyżykowski encountered copper ore at a depth of 655–658 metres near Sieroszowice. In 1959 the Lubin-Sieroszowice copper deposit was formally documented as the largest in Europe. The decision to construct the Kopalnia Sieroszowice was taken in 1972, and the mine was brought into operation on 1 January 1980, though initial ore transport to the surface relied on the shaft infrastructure of the neighbouring Kopalnia Rudna and Kopalnia Polkowice until the first dedicated Sieroszowice shaft, SW-1 — subsequently named Jan Wyżykowski — was commissioned on 4 December 1980.
Szyb SG-1 was sunk in the period 1979 to 1990, a construction programme that proved technically demanding: waterlogged ground conditions required five years of drainage work before sinking could proceed. The shaft was built by PeBeKa and was the 26th shaft completed in the Legnicko-Głogowski Okręg Miedziowy. On completion it reached a depth of 1,050 metres and was designated a zjazdowo-materiałowy shaft, serving the transport of personnel and materials rather than primary ore extraction. The shaft is located in the vicinity of Jakubów, in the Sieroszowice section of the mine's operating area.
In the 50th anniversary year of the discovery of the copper deposit, SG-1 received the honorary name Szyb Świętego Jakuba — the Shaft of Saint James — a designation approved by the Bishop of Zielona Góra-Gorzów. The naming acknowledged the shaft's situation on the Dolnośląska Droga Świętego Jakuba, the Lower Silesian branch of the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela, and its proximity to the parish church of Saint James at Jakubów, one of the oldest parishes in Lower Silesia, dating to 991, which had recently been elevated to the status of a sanctuary. A commemorative scallop shell emblem — the Muszla Jakubowa — was subsequently mounted on a wall of the shaft surface buildings.
Between 2009 and 2011, a central surface air-conditioning station with a rated cooling capacity of 15 MW was installed at SG-1 by PeBeKa. This installation, along with associated underground chilled-water pipelines, distribution stations, and air coolers, was constructed to manage the elevated temperatures encountered at depth in the Sieroszowice operating sections.
Zakłady Górnicze Polkowice-Sieroszowice came into existence in 1996 when Kopalnia Polkowice, which had been producing copper since 1968, was merged with Kopalnia Sieroszowice. The combined enterprise operates across four principal mining areas — Polkowice, Radwanice Wschód, Sieroszowice, and Gaworzyce — and extracts polymetallic ore containing copper and silver by room-and-pillar methods. Annual output from the combined plant reaches approximately 12 million tonnes of ore. Szyb SG-1 continues to serve as an active working shaft within this operation.