Singareni Collieries Company Ltd (SCCL) has decided to scale up its production to meet the growing demand of coal, particularly in the backdrop of increasing demand for energy and rise in the prices of imported coal ranging from 30% to 100% based on the quality and origin (country) of the coal.
Chairman and Managing Director of the coal company N. Sridhar held a virtual meeting with all area general managers and directors of SCCL on Monday underscoring the need to scale up coal extraction. He stated that major thermal power stations in the neighbouring Karnataka, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh had coal reserves only for 2-3 days and there was also demand for Singareni coal from 15 major thermal power stations in other States.
With the increase in the prices of imported coal and rising demand for energy from the industry, there was need to achieve coal production beyond targets. Most of thermal power stations, sponge iron and cement companies were looking at sourcing coal locally (within the country) as the prices of imported coal have gone up by up to 100% impacting their production chain and economics of working, Mr. Sridhar told the area GMs and directors.
He stated that the Ministry of Coal was also holding reviews on daily basis and asking the coal companies to scale up their production to meet the increasing demand. Since SCCL has achieved remarkable growth during the first six months of the current fiscal, the expectations from the industry have also gone up.
Production of coal has to be maintained at at least 1.9 lakh tonnes a day with equal quantity of dispatches as the rains are receding. He also wanted the the area GMs to focus on the overburden removal of at least 1.3 million cubic metres every day along with production and dispatches.
Directors S. Chandrasekhar (Operations), D. Satyanarayana Rao (E&M) and N. Balaram (Finance & Personnel), advisors D.N. Prasad (Mining) and Surendra Pandey (Forestry), Executive Director (Coal Movement) J. Allwyn, general managers K. Suryanarayana (Coordination), K. Ravishanker (Marketing), Nagabhusan Reddy (Coal Preparation Plants), Sathaiah (Projects, Planning) and Surender (Strategic Planning) and others participated.
