NLC India Not Looking To Acquire Coal Mines Overseas

NLC India Ltd. has no plans to acquire coal mines overseas as the three blocks allotted to it by the government were sufficient to meet fuel requirement of its power plants, a top company official said.

"We have no plans to acquire coal mines overseas as three coal blocks allotted to us -- two in Odisha and one in Jharkhand -- were enough to meet the coal requirement of our power plants," NLC India Chairman and Managing Director SK Acharya told Press Trust of India.

The company would continue to focus on the blocks allotted to it in line with government of India's mission of 'Make in India'.

Company's coal-based plants "with 1,000 megawatt capacity were running, while 2,000 megawatt (plants) were under construction and around 4,000 megawatt were in the planning stage," the chairman and managing director said. Around two years back, "we had invited expression of interest...to find out commercial viability and to find out whether it would make good business sense for us to go abroad but now we are not thinking that," he said.

The main activity of NLC India is mining (coal and lignite) and power generation of thermal and renewable energy. The company's present mining capacity (lignite) is 30.6 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) and the present power generation capacity, including joint ventures is 3,240 megawatt.

At present, NLC India has four open cast lignite mines namely Mine I, Mine II, Mine IA and Barsingsar Mine.

The lignite mined out is used as fuel to the linked pit-head power stations. Also, raw lignite is being sold to small scale industries to use it as fuel in their production activities.