SAIL to get coking coal from Russia
New Delhi: State-owned Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL), the largest steel producer in the country, is ensuring it has adequate coking coal stock through imports from Russia and will complete imports of 300,000 tonnes from Russia by the end of this month. The company is looking to bring in 3,00,000 tons of coking coal by the end of this quarter (July – Sept), Amarendu Prakash, Chairman of SAIL, told Mint on the sidelines of the Indian Steel Markets conference here today. “It is a continuous thing; we buy from them continuously.
Recently, I believe, in the last quarter, we had taken 6 ships from that translates to 3 lakh tons," he added. Last quarter, the company imported three ships with 75,000 tons of coking coal each and is in the process of completing the import of four more. Considering this, the company through its SPV, a joint venture between PSUs, International Coal Ventures Private Limited (ICVL) is also looking to double up the capacity of the Benga coal mine in Mozambique, the chairman added.
At present, ICVL has a 2 MTPA (million tonnes per annum) capacity. “Right now, importing from Russia has proven to be a lot cheaper as compared to importing coal from other nations," Prakash added when asked about the cost of importing from Russia as compared to Australia. “Geographically we are trying to diversify our sourcing, we have long-term suppliers from Australia, and now we have long-term suppliers from Russia," he added.
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