The Indian group ICVL plans to invest more than 150 million dollars to double coal production in the concessions it holds in Mozambique to four million tons.

Quoted by the Indian press and Lusa, Amarendru Prakash, chairman of the board of SAIL, one of the Indian state-owned companies in this consortium, said that the investment planned for Mozambique "will be in the region of 150 to 200 million dollars".

The ICVL Group's coal assets are located in the Mozambican province of Tete, through Minas de Benga and ICVL Zambeze, two locally incorporated companies.

According to information from the group itself, Minas de Benga owns an operating coal mine in the district of Moatize, while ICVL Zambeze owns a mining concession partly in the city of Tete and in the district of Moatize, as well as four other mining concessions in the eastern part of Tete.

The two companies are owned by the International Coal Ventures Limited (ICVL) consortium, which comprises three shareholders, all steel manufacturers in India and owned by the Indian state, such as SAIL, NMDC and RINL.

The Benga open-cast coal mine, with proven reserves of 236 million tons of coal, began operating at the end of 2012 and has a "state-of-the-art" coal handling and processing plant, according to ICVL.

The coal produced is transported by ICVL-owned trains to the port of Beira, in Sofala province, a distance of around 590 kilometers. The company has a fleet of 15 locomotives and 310 wagons with an average transport capacity of 62 tons to transport the coal from the mine to the port.

"The fleet of locomotives and wagons is capable of transporting more than 1.6 million tons of coal a year," says ICVL.