It couldn’t be a better year-end for Coal India Ltd (CIL). After a disappointing show for most of the year, the State-owned major is expected to end December with 3 per cent production growth compared to same month, last year.
One of the company’s largest open pit mine at Dipka (30 million tonne a year) in Chhattisgarh, which suffered flooding this monsoon, will come back to full production mode in about a week. The rain-fed Lilagar river changed course and flooded the mine on September 29.
With 94-95 per cent of total production coming from open pit sources, CIL is essentially an opencast miner and such mining activity slows down in the monsoon, when the haul roads (roads inside the mine pit) get slushy.
