The Northern Coalfields Ltd (NCL) has established a research and development centre, named ‘Science and Applied Research Alliance and Support (SARAS)’. This research and development centre focuses on the sustainable model for development in coal mining. The R&D centre will be the centre of excellence, infrastructure up-gradation and IT initiatives for the subsidiary of the Coal India Ltd.

NCL has come up with a unique concept/model ‘SARAS’ to ensure advance preparation with current and future challenges of the mining sector.
Coal India’s flagship subsidiary NCL has set up a centre named “Science and Applied Research Alliance and Support”(SARAS) to promote Innovation, Research & Development and skill development along with improving company’s operational efficiency and utilize resources at optimum level. NCL CMD Shri Prabhat Kumar Sinha announced this pioneering move in Indian coal sector at a National Seminar on Innovation Driving Productivity with Special Focus on Coal, Power, Steel and MSME Sectors organized by World Confederation of Productivity Science in New Delhi today.

“SARAS will help and enable the company in Integration of Innovation and Research for enhancing coal production, productivity, and safety in mines. The company has set up a dedicated R&D Centre in collaboration with IIT (BHU) and have already commenced 6 varied domain projects worth ₹ 60 Million to facilitate this move.” Shri Sinha Said in the seminar.

Besides, the SARAS would also help establish centres of excellence to ensure technical support to R&D along with thrust on quality skill development and employment to local youths in and around company’s operational area. Continuous improvement of the existing technical infrastructure of the company for operational efficiency and integrating all initiatives with common tech platforms for optimum utilization of resources are also the objectives of setting up this centre.

CMD NCL Shri Sinha was also elected as a fellow of the World Academy of Productivity Science in the seminar for his significant and longitudinal contributions to the improvement of productivity, quality of work and other countless contributions to the coal sector.

NCL accounts for 15 per cent of India’s coal production and 10 per cent of thermal power generation of the country is met by the coal produced by this Miniratna Company of Govt. of India. The company produces more than 100 million tonnes of coal every year. It has planned to produce 107 million tonnes of coal in the current fiscal.