Radio Mozambique has reported that Indian company Jindal Africa has failed to comply with a court order ordering it to stop coal stockpiling activities at its Chirodzi mine, in the Moatize district of Mozambique’s Tete province. The order was issued by the Tete provincial court. The radio reported that a company spokesperson had stated that it needed time to react to the court order. (Jindal Africa is a subsidiary of Jindal Steel & Power, itself part of OP Jindal Group.)
The court issued its ruling on grounds of the environmental impact of the stockpiling. People living near the stockpiles had complained of health and other problems caused by pollution created by the coal stockpiles.
Chirodzi is a predominantly metallurgical (or coking) openpit coal operation. It currently has a production capacity of 3-million tons a year and total coal reserves of 1.35-billion tons.
Having earlier suspended operations at Chirodzi due to low coal prices, the company reactivated mining there on October 1 last year, due to the recovery in these prices, which rose by some 150% since August.
In its press release at the time, the company stated: “The sharp increase in coking coal prices has injected a great level of energy into the operations, and taking initiative from this turn of events, the company is gearing up to ramp up the mining. It aims to achieve the full production capacity of three-million tons per annum and rail all the saleable product for exports every month.”