Buoyed over a consultancy assignment of around Rs 2 crore from the International Coal Ventures limited (ICVl) in South African country Mozambique during last financial year, the Central Mine Planning and Design Institute (CMPDI) has started looking at possibilities for itself in offshore venues. CMPDI Chairman cum Managing Director (CMD) Shekhar Saran said on Saturday that the company was also looking at possibilities of venturing into mine planning and designing for minerals other than coal in the country.
“Dependency on coal for different projects has reduced over last couple of years and keeping the changing dynamics of energy sector in mind, I am not sure what domestic coal consumption figures are going to be 20 years down the line. So, it is better for our future to explore possibilities of works in sectors other than coal,” said Saran on Saturday while sharing important numbers achieved by the company during Financial Year (FY) 2016-17.
Saran said that last fiscal remained a spectacular year for Mini-Ratna Company, which recorded excellent all-round performance during the year and received Corporate Award on CSR Expenditure (Special Appreciation Prize) on 42nd Foundation Day of Coal India limited (CIl) celebrated on November 1, 2016 in Kolkata. He said that the company also received Excellent MoU rating (provided by DPE) for the year 2015-16.
“CMPDI achieved a new record in the field of exploration during 2016-17 in drilling. The company has achieved an all-time high drilling of 11.26 lakh metre, surpassing the target of 11.0 lakh metre during 2016-17 as compared to 9.94 lakh metre achieved in previous year through departmental resources and outsourcing, registering a growth of about 13 percent over previous year. Through departmental drills, it carried out about 4.41 lakh metre of drilling which is the highest in a year till date registering a growth of 8 percent over last year by adopting latest mud technology, induction of new higher capacity drills and high performance bits,” said Saran where all the senior CMPDI officials including Director (T/P&D) Binay Dayal and Director (T/RD&T) VK Sinha.
CMPDI observed its drilling productivity of departmental drills increasing to about 580 metres/drill/month, registering a growth of 5.6 percent over previous year. CMPDI also signed an MoU with CSIR-CIMFR labs for analysis of coal cores generated during exploration activity in different coalfields in India. The MoU has been signed for a period of five years and CSIR-CIMFR labs will analyze 1,05,000 metre coal core each year which will facilitate in evaluation of the coal quality that will be mined in future by various coal companies all over the country.
“One of our foremost achievements during year under consideration has been that CMPDI helped CIl HQ, Kolkata in achieving Certification for ISO 9001:2015 (Quality Management System) and ISO 50001:2011 (Energy Management System) and also achieved Certification of ISO 27001 (Information Security Management System) for CMPDI HQ and its three Regional Institutes,” elaborated Saran. As far as steps for improving office efficiency was concerned, the company established Video Conferencing facility connecting CMPDI (HQ) with all its Regional Institutes, located in six states across the country. Under CSR activities, though the company was bound to spend merely Rs 47 lakh during the year under prevailing CSR laws, it happily missed its own inflated target of Rs 1.2 Crores by merely less than Rs 1 lakh.