Nagpur: In what may be signs of a bounce back after Covid, Western Coalfields Ltd (WCL) has achieved a record dispatch on Friday. The public sector mining company, a Nagpur-based subsidiary of Coal India Ltd (CIL), dispatched 50 rakes of coal, which comes to 2.46 lakh tonnes. This is the highest single day dispatch so far.
It is a little more than double compared to dispatches made during the same period last year, said a senior official in WCL. Since lockdown, this has jumped more than three times.
The coal dispatch from WCL’s mines had come down to 15 to 18 rakes a day or 80,000 tonnes during the lockdown. This was due to less or almost no demand by the various state power generation companies.
“However, the company had envisaged the demand would soon bounce back and came up with a 100-day plan. This was meant to scale up the production in 100 days to meet the forthcoming demand. It could achieve the same in 50 days,” said R R Mishra, chairman-cum-managing director (CMD) of WCL.
Mishra said most of the demand is from the various state government generation companies. Generation companies in central, western and southern India were depending on sources in eastern states. WCL offered them additional coal at more favourable landed cost which contributed to the
increase in offtake, he said.
However, apart from the increase in dispatches due to the diversion, there has been a general increase in demand from power generation companies and industrial consumers too, he said.
Mishra said as much as 25% of the increase in offtake can be easily attributed to the increased industrial activity, which in turn raised power demand. This can be seen from the increase in off-take of coal through e-auction too, he said.
Industrial consumers can also buy coal through e-auction by paying a premium. During lockdown and the period immediately following around 2% to 3% of total available coal was lifted through e-auctioning. This has now increased to over 25%.
The premium offered during the auction has also reached 10% to 12% of the base price as against 2% to 3% earlier, said a source.
There has been substantial increase in demand from State gencos of Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and also from National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) and Independent Power Producers (IPPs), said a WCL release.
A Mahagenco source, however, said there has been no increase in the intake of WCL coal. The official agreed power generation has increased by 2000 MW since different phases of lockdown. According to the Mahagenco website, the total demand stands at over 15,000 MW. During normal times it is over 18,000 MW. The source said it can also be due to sudden dip in temperature.
