Prepare proposals to start 14 new mines in SCCL: CMD Sridhar

Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) Chairman and Managing Director N Sridhar gave instructions to the officers of the company to prepare proposals for starting 14 new mines. He informed that at present Singareni is producing 65 million tonnes coal and is growing to produce 67 million tonnes next year and plans should be made to achieve a production of 100 million tonnes in the coming five years.

The Chairman and MD held intense brainstorming sessions on the future of Singareni and development strategies with Singareni Directors and officials from mining, planning, estate, marketing, finance, personnel, purchase and IT departments on Friday.

Sridhar suggested Singareni should also move forward by preparing strategic future plans keeping in mind coal needs of the State and country. He requested that all necessary work for getting permissions for the 14 new upcoming mines and expansion of four existing mines has to be done collectively by all departments. He explained that Singareni has to increase quality as well as reduce production cost to keep up with the competition in the market. He explained the changes in the coal market.

Sridhar suggested that the working hours of machinery should be increased to decrease production cost considerably. At present various shovels are participating in production for 10 to 14 hours per day and this should be increased to 18 hours.

The cost of production in underground mines has reached Rs 9,000 per tonne and it will be more profitable if this comes down. He suggested that brainstorming sessions will be held with operators to increase the working hours of heavy machinery, which in turn will increase production.

The CMD said that SDL machines have to work with full capacity in underground mines and steps are to be taken to decrease the losses from underground mines. He explained that as many government organisations are becoming loss-making companies, keeping this in mind, Singareni has stepped into Solar and Thermal power sectors to create a strong financial foundation.

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 Manair dam. A strong financial foundation is being laid through power generation. Company Directors S Chandrashekar, N Balaram, D Satyanarayana Rao, ED (Coal movement) J Allwyn, Advisor (Mining) DN Prasad, Advisor (Forestry) K Surendra Pandey, GM (CDN) K Ravishankar, GM (Marketing) K Suryanarayana, GM (CPP) Nagabushan Reddy, GM (P&P) Sattaiah, GM (Estates) SDM Subhani and general managers of all departments participated in the meeting.