Coal is transported to the coking plant by ship or rail. Once the raw material has been unloaded, various different drives are used for its onward transportation, as appropriate to requirements. Belt conveyors create a steady material feed to the coking plant while discharge units move the coal out of an intermediate silo and into the Coke oven battery.

First of all, the coal is mixed, pulverized, and pounded to form a coal cake. This coal cake is then pushed by a charger-drive from the oven ceiling into the ovens. A row of travel drives ensures batteries of coke ovens are continuously loaded and emptied on a cyclical basis. Filling from the top is old-fashioned and should not be mentioned too much here. Once the ovens have been sealed, heated, and degassed, the finished coke is pushed out of the oven batteries by a ram drive. These operations are precisely coordinated so that a ramming operation can be carried out in the space of a few minutes.