Coal news and updates

Mundra Port handles record coal cargo in a day

Adani Ports and SEZ Ltd, country's largest port developer today said its flagship Mundra port has handled 1,51,229 tonnes of steam coal in 24 hours -- a new domestic record in coal cargo handling.

The cargo was imported by Adani Power, the sister firm of Adani Ports, from Indonesia and was carried by MV Cape Fushen, a large cape size vessel, the company said in a statement.

"This is a great milestone for Mundra port and the credit goes to our state of the art mechanised automated safe facilities... It is designed to handle coal that can feed most of the Indian power plants and therefore play an important role in the country's power generation," according to an Adani Ports statement.

The Mundra Port's West Basin terminal, which is also Asia's largest coal import facility, surpassed the last recorded best coal discharge performance nationally of 1,22,247 metric tonnes, the statement added.

The West Basin terminal's previous best was handling of over 1.15 lakh tonnes in January, 2012. The terminal has 60 million tonnes coal handling capacity annually.

Mundra Port is currently India's number one multi-cargo port and has an annual handling capacity of 180 million tones.

Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone also operates ports in Hazira and Dahej in Gujarat and is setting up coal handling facilities in Mormugao in Goa, Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh and at Kandla Port in Gujarat. The company plans to handle 200 million tonnes of cargo by 2020.

Shares of the company rose 0.62 per cent on the BSE to close at Rs 129 apiece today in an overall weak market.

Source: PTI