Coal India Plans To Commission Washeries In All New Mines

Coal India Ltd (CIL) has decided to compulsorily commission a washery in all new mines that would be opened up from now. At present, steel and cement manufacturers import the major chunk of their coal requirement because of the low heat content in coal supplied by Coal India. India has about11 per cent of the world''s coking coal deposits. However, because of the poor variety, Indian companies go for large-scale imports. Washing would significantly increase the UHV of Indian coal. CIL would be setting up these washeries with its own investment but their management would be given to private operators; regular inspection would be carried out by CIL''s quality control department. The washeries would be set up over 2-4 years. CIL has already issued guidelines to subsidiaries that a mandatory provision of a coal washery with modern technology has to be incorporated while preparing project reports for all opencast mines with annual capacity of 2.5 million tonnes. As of now, CIL subsidiaries run some washeries and a number of private washeries are also given the job. However, there have been several complaints on the functioning of these private washeries as the waste recovered often contains substantial heat value and this is eventually sold in the market, in violation of washing norms.