“Quality of coal is poor, not worthy of hard coke” – Traders said. No bid for even an ounce of coal in the Rail Mode sale, only a quarter sold in the road sale.
Dhanbad, August 14: Bharat Coking Coal Ltd. (BCCL) had an Exclusive e-Auction on Thursday. Due to poor quality of coal, none of the traders took interest in it and the coal remained in stock. BCCL has offered exclusive e-auction of 1 million tonnes of coal. Traders from hard coke, ferro alloys, sponge iron, cement, steel sector were to participate in this e-auction.
Not even an ounce of coal sold in Rail Mode sale:
However, there was no bidding for coal in the Rail Mode sale due to its poor quality. There were offers for 2 lakh tonnes from Kds-2 siding, 2 lakh tonnes from Kds-K (W-4) siding of Kusunda area and 1 lakh tonnes from Kds siding for the Rail Mode sale. None of the company came out to bid here.
Only a quarter of the bid in the Road Mode sale:
Only a quarter of the coal was bid for the Road Mode sale. The company had offered 5 million tonnes of ROM coal from three collieries. Only 127,450 tonnes of coal was sold on Thursday. Interestingly, bidders never went even a rupee ahead from the reserve price and the coal got sold on its floor price only. The reserve price for Nichitpur and AWM OCPs was ₹3147 per tonnes, while for NTST OCP it was ₹2737 per tonnes. This was the rate at which the coal was booked.
Quantities of coal sold and from where:
| Colliery | Offer | Total Sales |
| AKWM OCP | 1 lakh tons | 66750 tonnes |
| Nichitpur | 2 lakh tons | 57600 tonnes |
| NTST OCP | 2 lakh tons | 3100 tonnes |
Did not participate due to poor quality:
Chairman of Industries and Commerce BN Singh said that the quality of the coal from collieries which BCCL had offered was very poor. Most traders rejected it. Some people bought little quantities of coal only in helplessness to keep the kiln running. The traders are forced to run the kiln with imported coal due to the arbitrariness of BCCL. The company should have offered Bhanura, Damagoria, Lodna, Basdevpur, Kanakani and Ana.
Less coal, more stone:
Hard coke trader and Jharkhand Industries and Trade Association (JITA) president Amitesh Sahay said that the coal which was provided was useless. It was less coal and more stone. The company has placed conditions that a trader must buy at least 1050 tonnes of coal and that too through ROM. It was not possible for anyone to bid for them without manual loading. So, most of us, including me, did not take interest in it.
BCCL got trounced by the auction:
Exclusive e-Auction trounced BCCL in terms of quality. The company was claiming to have improved significantly in quality. The Finance Director said in a press conference that it was due to the quality that the company had made good profit in the last financial year. Contrary to his claim, the auction failed this time only due to quality. That too when the Coal Minister and Coal India Chairman had met online in last one week only and issued instructions on three points like production, dispatch and quality improvement. The auction also exposed BCCL’s claim of large number of quality coal lying in its stock.
“Auction has not been reviewed. According to the information received, it has been good somewhere and bad elsewhere. Will review it soon,” PM Prasad, CMD, BCCL.
