Coal India Ltd (CIL) has signed an agreement with Belarus-based mining equipment manufacturer – Belaz – for purchase of dumpers.
The company plans to procure 96 dumpers of 240-tonne capacity at an estimated investment of ₹2,900 crore. The entire 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 company said in a statement.
These dumpers are of the highest capacity currently operational in the country, which play a critical role in opencast mines.
For CIL, whose 95 per cent of the entire coal output is through opencast mines, dumpers of such high capacity are pivotal in ferrying Over Burden (OB) from mine working face to dump yard.
The batch of 96 dumpers would be deployed in two of the large opencast mines of South Eastern Coalfields Ltd (SECL), the highest coal producing subsidiary of CIL, with 84 for Gevra and 12 in Kusmunda.
These add to the fleet of 66 similar capacity machines with SECL.
CIL’s OBR performance clocked a growth of 20 per cent at 1,106 million m3 during current fiscal up to January.