The Singareni Collieries Company Limited has drawn up plans to take up 14 new mines over the next four years and expand four existing mines to increase its annual production to about 100 million tonnes of coal within five years.

During the two day company strategy meeting, N Sridhar, Chairman and Managing Director of the State-owned mining company, instructed Singareni senior officials to take up 14 new mines and target 100 million tonnes of coal production per annum within five years.

The CMD said that at present Singareni is producing 65 million tonnes of coal per annum and is expected to produce about 67 million tonnes of coal next year. Now the focus is on to draw up plans to achieve a production of 100 million tonnes.

He suggested that the focus be made on securing various mandatory permissions for taking up 14 new mines and expansion of 4 existing mines. Alongside, there will be accent on to increase the quality as well as reduce the production cost to keep up with the competition in the market.

He said 300 megawatts solar plants which are under erection should be completed by the end of the year and efforts are on for erection of another 300 megawatts floating solar plant on the Maneru dam.