Coal India’s production up 17% so far in FY23

“CIL has achieved 99.7% of the progressive production target and brought down the annual asking growth rate by almost half to 6.7%. The company began FY’23 with an asking rate of 12.4% in a bid to edge past the year’s output target of 700 MTs,” it said.

The company has to produce 287.4 MT of coal during the remaining four months of this fiscal to achieve its FY23 output target.

“This is achievable with strong augmentation in production so far and overburden removal, displaying robust growth that helps in faster extraction of coal in the coming months. we feel confident of surpassing the fiscal’s production target. Also, during Q4 production steps up into higher trajectory,“ the statement cited a senior company official as saying.

Last month, Coal India produced 60.7 MT of coal, achieving 100% of the target and logging nearly 13% growth over 53.8 MT recorded in November last year. Sequentially, output rose 14.7% last month.

Boosting CIL’s prospects of ramping up future production, overburden removal (OBR) surged ahead by 18% at the end of November. CIL excavated 984.5 million cubic metre (M.Cu.M) of topsoil till November against 835 M.Cu.M for comparable period of FY22. OBR growth for the month was 28.4%.

In open cast mines, coal can be extracted only after removing layers of soil, stone, among others. This soil and stone etc is known as over burden. The removal of this overburden is known as ‘overburden removal’ (OBR).

CIL’s supplies to power plants went up by 39.5 MT to 380.7 MTs during April-November, up 11.6% year-on-year. Supplies stood at 341.2 MT year ago same period.

Total coal dispatches to all consuming sectors stood at 445 MTs till November, a jump of nearly 24 MTs, growing 5.7% on year.

The increase in supply to power plants is significant, as in April-May this year, the country witnessed a looming power crisis amid low availability of coal.

Stock at CIL’s pitheads at the end of November stood at 28.5 MT, as per the company statement.