Coal news and updates

War blasts Singareni explosives supply lines, hits coal output

The Russia-Ukraine war has impacted coal output in Singareni mines with 10% production already hit, thanks to problems arising out of import of explosives from these countries in conflict, said top Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) officials.

The SCCL uses the explosives for blasting the mines and sources them through eight agencies which import the explosive material, especially ammonium nitrate, from Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria and Turkey. "About 10% our production is affected. While 30% of ammonium nitrate is imported from these countries, 70% is available from local manufacturers," SCCL director (operations) S Chandrasekhar told TOI.

To meet the urgent requirement of explosives, the SCCL called for tenders recently. A pre-bid meeting was held on Saturday. The new tender conditions were framed to improve the supplies, officials said.

"It has been decided to incentivise those agencies which supply the explosives as per the schedule and meet the targets and penalise those who default on the deadlines," a senior official said.

Chandrasekhar said the SCCL owns two manufacturing units of explosives at Ramangundam and Manuguru where production is just 50,000 metric tonnes a year as against total demand of 2.50 lakh MTs.

"The remaining explosive material is being procured from private suppliers," he said. Official sources said three months prior to the war, Russia started reducing exporting ammonium nitrate, which is the main component.

The suppliers, who participated in the bids, asked for more relaxations for supplies as they have been facing shortage of ammonium nitrate from Russia, Ukraine and other countries. The authorities assured to fix the rates of explosives after checking Coal India Limited (CIL) modalities and conditions.

SCCL officials had held a meeting with eight suppliers a couple of weeks ago on augmenting supplies. As it did not yield the desired results, it was decided to float tenders for more procurement. "The company needs at least 700 MTs a day. As of now, we are getting 550 MTs. It was around 450-475 MTs a day a couple of weeks ago," Chandrasekhar added.