CIL signs Rs 2,900-cr pact with Belaz for procurement of 96 dumpers

• The entire Rs 2,900-crore investment would be funded through CIL's own finances and includes the cost of equipment along with the spares and consumables for eight years

• The batch of 96 dumpers would be deployed in two of the large opencast mines of South Eastern Coalfields Limited (SECL)

New Delhi: Coal India Limited (CIL) has formally signed a major procurement pact worth Rs 2,900 crore for the purchase of 96 dumpers of 240 Ton capacity each with Belaz, the Belarus-based mining equipment manufacturer. Earlier in August 2020, CIL's Board had given its nod for their procurement. These dumpers are of the highest capacity currently operational in the country and they play a critical role in opencast mines, said Coal India in an official statement on Tuesday. The entire Rs 2,900-crore investment would be funded through CIL's own finances and includes the cost of equipment along with the spares and consumables for eight years.

For CIL, where 95 percent of the entire coal output comes through opencast mines, dumpers of such high capacity are pivotal in ferrying Over Burden (OB) from mine working face to dump yard. OB is the extraneous material that overlays the coal seam, removal of which makes the dry fuel's production easier.

New dumpers will be deployed in 2 SECL mines, says CIL

The batch of 96 dumpers would be deployed in two of the large opencast mines of South Eastern Coalfields Limited (SECL), the highest coal producing subsidiary of CIL, namely Gevra and Kusmunda. While 84 machines would be pressed into action in Gevra, the rest 12 would be operationalised in Kusmunda, said CIL. 

The first lot of six dumpers would roll into Gevra OC expansion project within eight months from the signing of the contract. Thereafter, on CIL's green signal of their performance, after one year from the date of their commissioning, the rest 90 would follow at four machines per month.

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Around 66 similar capacity machines are already operational in SECL. Once the 96 newly-ordered dumpers are added to the existing fleet, the total would swell up to 162. 

CIL OBR performance clocks 20% growth in FY21 so far 

CIL's OBR performance has been persistently positive since the beginning of the fiscal and ending January 2021 as the growth clocked a robust 20 percent at 1,106 Million Cubic Metres. With the company confident of sustaining OBR growth momentum, the role of dumpers in transporting the extracted OB gets amplified further. 

"We have been upgrading and modernising our mining equipment to meet the future challenge of increasing the production. Especially, in the recent past we have stepped up on the procurement of heavy earth moving machinery," said a senior executive of the company. CIL placed orders worth Rs 8,688 crore during the previous fiscal for HEMM procurement. 

The purchase contract was inked in the presence of Pramod Agrawal, Chairman, CIL and Binay Dayal, CIL Director (Technical). Petr Parkhomchyk, Minister of Industry, Belarus and Andrei Rzheussky, Ambassador of Belarus to India, attended the signing event signifying its importance. 

This is the second contract that CIL has sealed with Belaz, as earlier it had procured 77 dumpers of 150 Ton capacity from the same company through a global bidding process.   

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