Move to start trading in imported coal to help small buyers
coaljunction, a division of mjunction services for online coal sales, is set to tie up with Indonesian and South African miners and suppliers to start trading in imported coal.
“To help small buyers in the domestic market, we want to venture into imported coal trading soon. For this, we are already in tie-up talks with a number of mines and suppliers in Indonesia and South Africa. With the country planning to import more than 200 million tonnes coal in the next three years, we, too, want to be a part of it,” said Viresh Oberoi, managing director and chief executive officer of mjunction services.
mjunction, an equal joint venture between Tata Steel and Steel Authority of India, has a number of trading portals in the entire e-commerce spectrum — metaljunction, buyjunction, coaljunction, autojunction, valuejunction, financejunction, straightline and mjunctionedge.
The world’s largest coal miner, Coal India Ltd (CIL), sells 10 per cent of its coal through eduction and the rest through notified prices. “We are a partner service provider to CIL. We started with Bharat Coking Coal Ltd and it became an immediate success. Now, we provide similar services to all CIL subsidiaries and to The Singareni Collieries Company Ltd,” Oberoi said.
According to him, CIL is gaining more than Rs 2,500 crore extra revenue through this every year. “It helps them earn 60-200 per cent higher than the notified prices, depending on the quality of coal.”
Since its inception in 2005, coaljunction has done an overall business of Rs 14,176 crore, while the figure for this financial year stands at Rs 3,580 crore. It has sold over 70 million tonnes coal till now and has more than 9,000 buyers. “We have submitted a proposal to speed up the overall delivery process. Now, it takes 30-45 days after identifying a buyer, which is causing problems for buyers,” Oberoi said.
For the next two years, the company wants to further expand its wings abroad. “mjunction is looking at countries in South East Asia, Europe and the United Kingdom for further tie-ups. We have already tied up with three companies abroad — Tata Steel Europe, Tata Steel Thailand and Max Steel Singapore.”