Coal India Ltd’s emphasis on ensuring better quality coal supplies seems to be yielding results with the state-owned miner registering an improvement in grade conformity in coal supplies to 64 per cent during April-October 2021 as against 59 per cent during same period last year.

The improvement is based on an analysis conducted by independent third-party sampling agencies. Grade conformity refers to the supply of declared grade of coal and above it.

The improvement in coal grade conformity comes at a time when there have been contentions of fall in quality of coal supplies by a certain section of Coal India’s customers.

“The monsoon rains every year cause a certain degree of deterioration in coal quality due to surface moisture of coal. Loading through payloaders may lead to little amounts of mud and slurry getting in due to sogginess of the ground. But it does not mean that Coal India mixes rocks in its supplies. Isolated incidents if any are dealt with the severity they deserve,” a senior company official said.

The notion that customers were not receiving the grade of coal that they pay for was misconceived, as no customer suffers financial loss arising out of quality mismatch between the declared dispatched grade and the analysed grade, he added.

As per terms of the fuel supply agreement, Coal India initially bills customers based on the declared grade of coal despatched. Such provisional bills are later adjusted once the quality of coal is tested and established by an authorised third party sampling agency.

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Production through surface miners, deployed in OC (opencast) mines, which entail blast free selective mining leading to better quality coal output and consistent sized coal, posted a growth of 11 per cent from April to November at 180.4 million tonne (mt) against 162.5 mt during the same period last year.

Independent sampling

To allay apprehensions on quality issues, all Coal India customers can also opt for quality assessment of coal supplies through independent third-party sampling agencies (TPSA).

To strengthen analysis of coal supplied, Coal India has engaged two third-party sampling and testing agencies —COTECNA Inspection India and SGS India — in addition to the existing CSIR-CIMFR and Quality Council of India. Further, the Ministry of Power has decided that Power Finance Corporation shall empanel TPS.

The agreement also has a provision for challenging the result of TPSAs, whereby the coal samples preserved are sent to the designated government referee laboratory for re-analysis, as well.

UTTAM portal

In order to monitor coal quality, Coal India has launched a portal ‘UTTAM’ (Unlocking Transparency by Third Party Assessment of Mined Coal) to record the entire cycle of a sample. With the help of this portal, consumers can access coal quality information on a regular basis .

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Of the 58 coal testing laboratories across subsidiary Coal India companies, 50 are now NABL accredited and the process is underway for the remaining eight.

“Due to continuous conscious measures towards quality maintenance, the gap between the weighted average of declared and analysed GCV of coal reduced remarkably to 23 kcal/kg in FY21 from 61 kcal/kg in FY20,” the report said.

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