Production at Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL), the Dhanbad based subsidiary of Coal India Limited, has picked up and is expected to rise to about 29 to 30 million tonnes in August, marking a swift turnaround after a downturn during the first quarter of the new financial year 2020-21 due to lockdown and resultant lack of demand.

This was divulged on Friday by Chairman cum Managing director of Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL), PM Prasad, who expressed hope that production will reach breakeven position soon.

Not only other industries but powerhouses and steel factories, which are major buyers of coal from BCCL, had also demanded lesser coal from BCCL leading to stockpiling of huge amounts of coal during April. The usual production which was around 80 thousand tonnes to 1 lakh tonnes per day before lockdown had reduced to around 40-50 thousand tonnes during the month of April.

Talking to The Telegraph Online, Prasad said, "The monsoon has not impacted the coal production much, the impact was more due to the lockdown as only only 10 million tonne of coal destpatch took place during the month of April. The situation slightly improved in May with some of the industries opening up and the process of gradual increase in production and despatch continued in June which finally rose to around 19 million tonnes during July making it almost double of that of April.”

The situation has further improved during the first week of August. "We are expecting the total despatch to increase to around 29 to 30 million tonne as the per day despatch is inching towards 2 million tonne. We are expecting the situation to further improve by next month when the per day despatch is expected to reach around 2.8 million tonne per day,” said Prasad.

Asked about the impact of monsoon on production and despatch, Prasad said, "Around 40 per cent rains out of total 1000-1100 mm of rains, which takes place in area, has already taken place so we are expecting the remaining part of monsoon to not significantly affect the production as we are continuously monitoring the situation through area-level control rooms as well as the control room at the BCCL headquarter."