Coal news and updates

Xcoal aims to expand India presence, says CEO

January 21: Xcoal Energy & Resources (Xcoal), a specialised exporter of US-origin coal, has set a target to increase its presence in India by supplying a total of 5 million tons (mt) of coal per annum during the coming days from current levels of around 1.50-2 mt, a top official from the company told ICMW.

“We have made a big commitment to expand our business in India by opening an office in Mumbai recently and will continue to expand our business,” Xcoal’s CEO, Ernie Thrasher, told ICMW over phone from Mumbai.

Xcoal primarily supplies high sulphur and high calorific value US-origin coal and had exported around 16 mt coal in 2014 of which around 10 mt went to various countries in Asia, including 1.50-2 mt to India.

“We believe there is a market here in India for high sulphur coal. Of the 10 mt that is coming to Asia (through Xcoal), 1.50-2 mt had been coming to India and hopefully we can build this to 5 mt,” Thrasher said.

It has been found that in India many of the industrial consumers and small industries are realising the benefits of using high CV, low ash coal which they either consume directly or blend with higher ash Indian coal or lower CV coal from Indonesia or other countries, he said.

The US-origin coal that Xcoal supplies is cheaper on plant delivered basis compared to other coals because the cost per Kcal is quite competitive, he said, but pointed out that there are some customers who have constraints with high sulphur content in the coal.

However, there are others who are using pet coke and, obviously for them, sulphur is not a problem, he added.

Asked if they are looking at some kind of tie-ups with expert dealers to sell their coal to Indian consumers or will sell directly to consumers, Thrasher said, “We would be selling directly to the buyers, but if there are distributors serving the small buyers, we will certainly work with them. We have an open door policy.”

Explaining the rationale behind opening an office in India, the CEO said, “We have opened an office in India to give our customers reliable service. We had been selling US-origin coal without having an office in India but the primary reason for opening office is to demonstrate to customers here that we want to give them reliable service on which they can depend on a sustainable basis.”

“In the past, we had been providing technical support to our customers by arranging visits of combustion engineers to share the experiences of people who had used high sulphur and high calorific value coal not only in the US, but in other countries as well. We will be able to provide better service now,” Thrasher said.