Kolkata, July 4 Adani Enterprises Ltd has emerged the lowest bidder in Coal India’s maiden import tender floated on behalf of power generating companies. The company is believed to have quoted a little over ₹4,000 crore for import of 2.416 million tonnes, industry sources said.

Mohit Minerals, Chettinad Logistics Pvt Ltd and Bara Daya Energi an Indonesian firm in collaboration with an Indian consortium were some of the other companies that had participated in the e-tender. The bids were opened on Friday.

The import of 2.416 mt will be for July-September period of the current fiscal and will go to seven State generating companies (Gencos) and 19 IPPs (independent power producers).

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After the price discovery, CIL will immediately execute a contract with the successful bidder for supply of coal. Then the state-owned coal miner can enter into a back to back agreement with State Gencos and IPPs to whom coal has to be supplied.

According to sources, Adani has some clear advantages as it owns and operates Carmichael mine in the Galilee Basin of Queensland through its subsidiary Adani Mining Pty Ltd. The company had started supplying coal from the Galilee Basin to countries in Asia, including India in early 2022. The mine is delivering 10 mt per annum.

Proximity to port is another advantage apart from its previous experience of bagging coal import contracts from the State power major NTPC. The company had recently received massive ₹8,400-crore contract from NTPC to supply coal. However, the coal was to come from Indonesia and not from Adani’s Australia mines. Notably, Adani had sourced Indonesian coal for NTPC as well as for its own power project in Mundra, Kutch.

Coal imports to augment supplies

The Centre had nominated CIL as a centralised agency to augment coal supplies to Gencos and IPPs through import of coal, at a time when the demand for coal is high. It had recently directed CIL to be prepared to import 12 mt of coal for power utilities for the next 13 months up to July 2023. This would help cater to the mandatory blending requirement of Gencos and IPPs.

Accordingly, CIL’s board had, on June 2, given its nod for the company to proceed ahead with the issuance of two international tenders for sourcing coal from overseas, a short term and a medium term tender.

E-tenders floated

The state-owned miner had also floated two international competitive bidding e-tenders of 3 million tonnes (mt) each, to source coal from abroad.

In the pre-bid meetings held between June 14 and June 17, bidders had requested for some amendments in the tender including narrowing the time window of the bid price validity from 90 days to 60 days. They also asked for fixing time period for the supply of the first tranche of shipment, from the date of letter of award, between four-to-six weeks. Earlier, the supply schedule was based on a particular percentage of delivery spread over two-to-three months.

Taking cognizance of their requests favorably, CIL had amended the bid document and had floated a corrigendum on e-procurement portal to hasten the process.

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