The e-tender for company’s Jagannath Washery was formally floated by Mr J P Singh,Director (Technical/P&P) of MCL at the corporate office here in the presence of senior officers.MCL had added a new feather to its cap when Mr A N Sahay, CMD, formally floated first e-tender in the country for a Coal Washery, named Ib-Valley Washery of 10 million tonne annual capacity, on May 29, 2015.
MCL had produced over 121 million tonne coal during the last fiscal ended March 31, 2015, and plans for producing 250 million tonne coal in financial year 2019-20, thus sharing 25 per cent of Coal India’s One Billion coal production target.
As per Gazette Notification of MOEF&CC, TPPs located beyond 750km and 500km from pit head are prohibited to use coal of more than 34% ash w.e.f. 1st Jan 2015 and 5th June,2016 respectively. MOEF&CC has further indicated to amend the Gazette Notification by eliminating the provision of distance of TPPs from pit head and so, every gram of coal will have to be beneficiated prior to its supply and use in TPPs irrespective of its distance. In light of Gazette Notification, Coal India decided to setup number of washeries in its first phase and MCL was entrusted to set up 4 washeries of 10MTY capacity each . In MCL, ash% of coal is generally having more than 40% . These coals will require beneficiation prior to supply and use in TPPs.
These coal washeries are to be set-up under Build Operate Maintain (BOM) concept, where a bidder has a freedom to choose the state-of-art-technology for use, keeping in mind the set-up cost, washing charge, water and power consumption and impact of yield percentage. Under this concept, operator will have to setup and operate the plant at least for 10 years . In conventional tendering i.e. manual tendering under BOM concept , about 16 months period is required to finalize the bid and signing of contact. A washery, after the signing of contract would be made functional within 18 months. Almost 3 years period is required to start the commercial operation of the plant from publishing of bid.
MCL has innovated in-house system of tendering through electronic mode which eliminates human interference and ensures transparency while the evaluation is done by a system-generated process for deciding the successful bidder. A team of engineers of Washery department, e-procurement cell headed by GM(Washery), Mr. P.K.Mishra has developed the module of e-bidding with CMPDI.
In contrast to the manual tendering process, which takes on an averageone and half year to decide the successful bidder, decisions through e-tendering are arrived at quickly as financial evaluation is computed by an in built pre-defined business logic using Long Range Marginal Cost and Discounted Cash Flow Method. By adopting e-bidding , about a year time can be saved in finalizing lowest bidder.
Since the documents required to be submitted through manual tendering for such big projects run into 400 pages or more, the e-tendering mode offers a win-win situation to the coal company(MCL) as well as the tenderer and also reduces use of paper.
MCL had earlier finalised the tenders for two coal washeries through manual tendering at Hingula in December 2013 and at Basundhara in May 2014 which are awaiting EC Clearance. In the 2nd phase, the MCL plans tendering for three more washeries — 20 MTY on turnkey basis at Lakhanpur, 40 MTY at Siarmal and another 20 MTY at Gopaljee Kaniha – to achieve a total coal washing capacity of 120 MTY.