With the increasing demand for coal, particularly in the power sector, Singareni Collieries Company Ltd (SCCL) has decided to dispatch coal by at least 34 railway rakes a day from the present 30 rakes to its contracted buyers.
The decision comes in the backdrop of the Coal Ministry’s direction to the coal companies to scale up production and dispatches to meet the increasing demand of coal and improve coal stocks at thermal power plants, most of which were stated to be running with stocks sufficient only for three-four days against having reserve stocks to last for at least for two-three weeks in the past.
Although the company’s coal production target for the current fiscal is 70 million tonnes (mt), its management is planning to scale up the capacity of coal handling plants (CHP), the points from where the coal is loaded on to railway rakes (wagons), to 115 mt over the next three years from less than 80 mt now. The plan includes enhancing the capacity of existing 9 CHPs and construction of four new CHPs this year.
Further, the management has decided to completed the Sattupalli-Kothagudem railway lines by Dec.-end. Chairman and Managing Director of SCCL N. Sridhar reviewed the coal dispatches being done at all the CHPs across the company’s mining areas. According to officials, dispatches of coal from CHPs during first half of the last financial year was only 17.9 mt and this year it was 31.3 mt during the same period with a growth rate of 75%. The CMD wanted the officials to complete the new CHPs and enhance the capacity of existing CHPs to meet the target of dispatching 70 mt coal this financial year – dispatching at least 38.7 mt coal during the October-March period. The officials have been told to speed up work on the Kishtaram CHP, phase-two CHP in Ramagundam-3 OC-3 (opencast mine), GDK-5 OC CHP, IK OC CHP, all under construction, so that they could be completed by Nov.-end. Capacity of Srirampur area CHP is being enhanced by 4 mt and that of Manuguru-K CHP by 2 mt by Dec.-end. In all, the company targets CHP capacity of 102 mt by March-end.
