Cotecna Success Story: A Trusted Name in the Indian Coal Market

India is the third largest consumer of coal globally, after China and the US, and the share of coal in its energy mix has been rising. Thermal coal accounts for around 75% of India’s coal.

In 2022-23, India produced 893.19 million tonnes of coal. In 2023-24, India produced 997.25 million tonnes of coal with a growth of 11.65%. As of 31 March 2024, the installed electricity generation capacity from coal is around 442 GW.

Cotecna’s Role in the Indian Coal Market

Cotecna operates the biggest domestic coal sampling project under the Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research (CSIR-CIMFR). The project entails the collection and preparation of coal samples at the loading sites of different subsidiaries of the Coal India Limited, Singareni Collieries Company Limited. As well as at unloading sites of the Power Utilities and thereafter the transportation of prepared samples to CSIR-CIMFR laboratories. From 2016 to 2023, the annual coal volumes handled by Cotecna, under this mega project, were over 800 million tonnes.

In 2021, the Ministry of Power (MoP) communicated its decision to engage the services of other agencies besides the Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research (CIMFR) for Third Party Sampling (TPS) of coal for the power sector.

In 2022, the Ministry of Power advised the Power Finance Corporation (PFC), an Indian central public sector undertaking owned by the Ministry of Power, to carry out the empanelment process to have multiple Third-Party Sampling Agencies (TPSA) for the collection, preparation and analysis of coal samples. The services were to be conducted at the loading bays of coal producing companies with appellate/referee provision for power and non-power sectors.

What Challenges was the client facing prior to working with Cotecna:

The Indian government was trying to minimize disagreements arising from quality issues between coal producers and coal consumers. The resolution would help the nation reduce dependency on imported thermal coal from various countries, improving sustainable energy supply and security planning for the future.

How did Cotecna help solve this problem:

With 8 years of vast experience in successfully handling over 800 MMT of domestic coal projects, Cotecna was empanelled as one of the trusted TPSA by the Power Finance Corporation for the coming 5 years.

As required by the project, Cotecna has established several mechanical sample preparation facilities at the coal mining subsidiaries and coal producers’ premises with robust monitoring systems having round the clock CCTV surveillance. In addition, Cotecna has very experienced domain expertise teams executing the coal sampling work at various subsidiaries of the Coal India Limited, and Singareni Collieries Company Ltd.

Cotecna’s ISO/IEC 17025 accredited state-of-the-art coal testing laboratories strategically situated at various locations are delivering high-level accuracy coal analysis results and helping the coal supply chain to maintain its quality safety and security.

Cotecna is connecting coal producers and consumers through a web portal solution for real time updates. The portal shows the whole process of coal quality monitoring starting from sample collection by a mechanical sampling system, preparation, testing and maintaining transparency at every stage of execution. Cotecna has been engaged for about 150 million MTPA of coal sampling & testing by reputed electricity generation companies in India like NTPC, DVC, Mahagenco, Apgenco, MPPGCL, etc. and by coal producing companies like NCL, MCL and SCCL.

Cotecna is successfully continuing the coal sampling and testing work for reputed coal producers and consumers with highly trained manpower as per the stipulated standards/SOPs keeping the safety of its staff a priority and helping the industry’s supply chain to provide clean coal for electricity generation fulfilling the dream of our honourable Prime Ministry in providing electricity to the poorest of the poor.

To learn more about Cotecna coal testing services, or Cotecna India, please contact us.