MCL aims to lift 104mn.t.

The target set for MCL is the highest among all subsidiaries of CIL. The annual target for South Eastern Coalfield Limited (SECL), the largest among all CIL subsidiaries stands at 100mn.t. this year. MCL was given a coal production target of 99mn.t., or 11mn.t. higher than the target in the last financial year.

MCL produced 88mn.t. in 2007-08. Now MCL has to produce 16 million tonne of excess coal over last year. MCL has been posting annual growth of 10 per cent since inception in 1992. The chairman-cum managing director of MCL, S R Upadyay, expressed cautious optimism on the achieving the new target if some of his strategies are put on track.

He said, a new open cast mine Kaniha has to be opened shortly to add to the capacity of the coal company. Pointing out that over burden removal is the main bottleneck in the way of increasing coal output, he argued for outsourcing the over burden removal work in at least five open cast mines which are becoming vertical due to slow pace of over burden removal works.

"The outsourcing is a temporary one and it would be done away with after the company purchases the machineries which will take two to three years for official procedures", he said.

MCL has decided to purchase 172 heavy equipment worth of Rs 300 crore for the OB works as the current machines are old and obsolete.