Indian major Coal India Limited (CIL) will invest $1.2- billion to ramp up the capacity of its Kusmunda mine, in the central Indian province of Chattisgarh, from 15-million tonnes a year to 50-million tonnes a year.

The opencast Kusmunda mine, operated by South Eastern Coalfields Limited (SECL), a wholly owned subsidiary of CIL, will be expanded within the next three to five years and, once the 50-million-tonne-a-year capacity is achieved, will rank among the largest single coal mines in the world, a CIL official says.

Currently, the Gevra coal mine, in Chattisgarh, also operated by SECL, is India’s largest coal mine, with a capacity of 30-million tonnes a year.

The official says the Kusmunda capacity expansion will be implemented using the existing technology mix of a shovel-dumper method and in-pit conveyors to transport coal from the pithead to the stockyards. However, the single biggest challenge will be the con- struction of a railway link from the stockyards to the Indian railway network, the cost of which has been included in the total project cost for Kusmunda.

The megaproject figures among the 126 new ventures identified by the miner to be taken up by 2017. According to the company, project reports have already been prepared for 28 of these projects and 60 of the total projects are expected to go on stream by 2017, adding 88-million tonnes a year to the total production capacity of CIL.

The miner’s ambitious project planning comes in the wake of CIL’s being poised to miss its coal production target of 482-million during 2013/14 by about five-million tonnes, according to CIL chairperson S Narsing Rao.

According to mandatory filing to stock exchanges, CIL reported production of 319.19-million tonnes between April and December 2013, 4.5% lower than targetted. As for offtake, CIL reported 341.52-million tonnes during the same period, 3.5% lower than the target set, though the miner did not cite any reasons for missing the targets set at the start of the year.