South Eastern Coalfields Ltd (SECL) has commenced the process for setting up a 5 MTPA Coal Washery at Baroud in Raigarh district.
The Washery would be set up on Build-Own-Operate (BOO) Concept, officials informed.
In order to meet the rising demand, Coal India Ltd has been setting up 15 new washeries with a total capacity of 112.6 million tonnes per annum. Out of these washeries, six are Coking Coal washeries with total capacity of 18.6 million tonnes per annum and nine Non-Coking washeries of 94.0 million tonnes per annum. Apart from these, 3 washeries of 11.6 million tonnes per annum are under construction, officials stated.
Notably, Coal India Ltd (CIL) has decided to set up washeries in its various subsidiaries to reduce the quantity of ash and other not useful component from coal so as to make it competitive in comparison to imported coal across the country.
Notably, SECL is targetting total coal production of 250 million tonnes (MT) from its underground and open cast mines by 2019-20, officials stated.
Coal India Ltd is targetting production of 1 billion tonnes of coal by 2020. Wagon availability will be a key factor for achieving this target , officials stated.
Notably, the Central government has also signed a Memorandum of Understanding each with the states of Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh for critical coal connectivity projects to improve transportation of coal, officials informed.
SECL has put its underground (UG) coal production target projections at 22 million tonnes (MT) by 2019-20.
The company compared to its underground coal excavation target by the aforesaid period has set a significantly higher coal production target projections from its open cast (OC) mines at 228 MT, officials stated.