Coal India Limited produces 479MTs of coal in Apr-Dec’22 period

Coal India Limited (CIL) said that its production for the period between April 2022 and December 2022 stood at 479 million tonnes (MTs), which is an increase of 65.4MTs or a growth of 16% compared to the same nine-month period of 2021.

The Indian government-owned coal producer claimed that it has achieved 101.4% of its progressive target, pipping it by 6.7MTs.

According to Coal India Limited, the asking growth rate for Q4 of the current fiscal has dropped to 5.7% which at the start of the fiscal year stood at 12.4%.

Furthermore, all its subsidiaries registered double-digit growth, said the Indian coal company.

A senior executive of the company said: “To outdo the annual output target of 700 MTs, CIL has to produce 221 MTs in Q4 FY’23 against 209 MTs for comparable quarter last fiscal.

“Our production pace is already up and expected to rise higher. Another point in our favour is large quantities of over burden removal. We feel positive about scaling over the output target.”

Coal India Limited produces 479MTs of coal in Apr-Dec’22 period. Photo courtesy of Coal India Ltd.

In December 2022, Coal India Limited produced 66.4MTs, which so far was the highest in this fiscal besides being 6.2MTs more than same month in 2021 with a 10.3% growth.

The coal mining company said that the 19.2% increase in over burden removal (OBR) at the end of the present fiscal’s December is a promising stimulus to boost its output in the coming months. Exposing the coal seams via OBR makes extraction of coal easier in the future, said the Indian central public sector undertaking.

Coal India Limited said that it extracted 1,154 million cubic metres (MCuM) of OBR till the end of December 2022 end compared to 968.6 MCuM of the same period last year.

The company supplied nearly 508MTs of coal to all consuming segments in the reported nine-month period with a volume expansion of 26MTs. It ended December 2022 with coal stock of 32MTs at its pitheads.