The Hindu Business Line : Fall in demand for East Coast Rly rakes to transport iron ore

Decline in demand
Wagon investment scheme customers cancel orders
Disruption in production in mines.
Virtual devastation of roads causing suspension of road movement of ore from the mines to the nearest railheads.

Diminishing offtake: A file picture of trucks being loaded with iron ore at a Kalinga Mining Corp iron ore mine in Kheonjar in Orissa.

Santanu Sanyal

Kolkata, Sept. 22

East Coast Railway (ECoR) is currently holding only one indent for loading iron ore for exports and no indent for loading for domestic movement from the Keonjhar-Nayagarh area in Orissa and worse, there is no material available at the loading points in the area, according to ECoR sources.

The WIS (Wagon Investment Scheme) customers, it is pointed out, have all cancelled their indents. “At the beginning of the fiscal, we had more than 3,000 indents for loading iron ore from the same area and 90 per cent of them were for exports”, say sources.

While the drop in demand for rakes for transportation of iron ore for exports has been caused mainly by the slump in international prices of the ore, the decline in demand for rakes for domestic transportation, the sources point out, should be attributed to the non-availability of the ore in the mine areas.

Excessive rainfall in the mine area is believed to have thrown up myriad problems, such as disruption in production in the mines and virtual devastation of the roads causing suspension of road movement of ore from the mines to the nearest railheads.

While the demand for rakes for domestic movement, it is hoped, will pick up from the middle of October, when the weather condition is expected to improve and the festival season will be over, the Railways is keeping its fingers crossed about the prospects of an early revival of export demand.

Fortunately, the iron ore movement on the Kottavalasa-Kirandul (K-K) line is not as bad, the daily throughput on the line at present being about 11 to 12 rakes as against the normal 15-16 rakes. The Chairman and Managing Director of National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC), who held meetings with the officials of ECoR in Bhubaneswar recently, is believed to have assured that from the middle of next month, the movement along the K-K line would further improve.

Also, with the opening up of new mines by NMDC in the Kirandul area in December 2009, the CMD assured, the throughput along the route would jump by another seven million tonnes annually, pushing up the demand for at least additional six rakes a day.

Meanwhile, the unsatisfactory loading of coal in Talcher continues to cause concern – the daily average loading having dropped to 20 rakes from the normal 28/29 rakes.

“A few days ago, the average daily loading was as low as 10 rakes”, the sources say.

The major power houses at Vijayawada, Raichur, Simadri and even Kanhia, though holding slender coal stocks at the plant levels, are resisting Talcher coal because of its poor quality.

“The coal is not being crushed with the result the big chunks are damaging conveyors and other equipment in the power houses”, add the sources.

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Decline in East Coast Rly iron ore movement
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