First in India: MCL floats e-tender for coal washery in Odisha’s Jharsuguda

Odisha Sun Times Business Bureau
Sambalpur, May 29:

Mahanadi Coalfields Limited today added another feather to its cap by floating the first e-tender ever to be done in the country for setting-up a Coal Washery of 10 million tonne capacity at MCL’s Lakhanpur Area in Jharsuguda district of Odisha.

The move was part of the company’s initiative to usher in technological advancements to improve quality of product and system.

Chairman-cum-Managing Director AN Sahay formally floated the e-tender here at the Corporate office of the Company, which clocked 121 million tonnes coal production in the last financial year, up about 10 per cent from 110 million tonnes produced in year 2013-14.

‘’The Ib Valley Washery of 10 MTY capacity will come-up at Lakhanpur Area in 18 months from the date of signing of the contract,’’ said Sahay, asserting that the e-tendering ensures transparency with negligible human interference and will help reduce the finalisation time for identification of lowest Bidder.

The e-tendering process will reduce the evaluation period in identifying the lowest bidder from an average time of 1 year in the manual tendering procedure to just immediately after opening of the price bids. In e-bidding, financial evolution will be computed by an in-built, pre-defined business logic using Long Range Marginal Cost & Discounted Cash Flow Method. Moreover it is a win-win situation for the bidders as well since the documents required to be submitted through manual tenders ran into at least 400 pages.

MCL had earlier finalized the tender for 2 washeries through manual tendering at Hingula in December 2013 and at Basundhara in May 2014, which are awaiting EC clearance. With the floating of this tender, the next tender has been planned to be floated on the 15th of next month for another 10 MTY washery at Jagannath Area and in the 2nd phase for a 20 MTY on turnkey basis at Lakhanpur, 40 MTY at Siarmal and another 20 MTY at Gopaljee Kaniha thus achieving a total coal washing capacity of 120 MTY.

Among others, Director (Technical/Operations) AK Tiwari, Director (Technical/Projects & Planning) JP Singh,  Director (Finance) KK Parida, and all Area General Managers and General Managers of Headquarters were present on the occasion. The floating of the tender was followed by a lecture by RK Sachdev, Ex Advisor (Projects), Ministry of Coal, Govt. of India on “International Practices on Coal Washing – Need of Benefication of Indian Coal”.