BCCL, HEC tie up for modern coal washery

KOLKATA - The Bharat Coking Coal Limited, a subsidiary of the countrys largest miner Coal India, has tied up with a consortium led by the Heavy Engineering Corporation (HEC) for setting up a modern five million tonne coking coal washery at Madhubani in Bihar.

It will be a state-of-the-art kind of washery. The HEC is giving the technical know-how. The washery will give a much higher yield than what conventional know-how would have given, Coal India chairman Partha Bhattacharyya told mediapersons here Tuesday.

He said two more washeries - one in Mahanadi Coalfields Limited and another in the BCCL - will be cleared shortly. We hope three washeries to be finalised by this year end.

Next year, tenders would be issued for 11 more washeries. We are also pursuing setting up of in-built washeries on projects with production capacity of 2.5 million tonne or more at pit head, he said.

Coal India has plans to set up 20 new modern washeries with a total capacity of 111 million tonnes over the next four-five years in partnership with private agencies.

The washeries would be set up on build-operate-maintain basis where the selected agencies would design, construct, operate and maintain them.

Coal India would make the investment and provide logistical support like land, water and electricity.

Coal India now has 19 washeries.