Coal behemoth Coal India, in pursuit of coal gasification, is making a structural shift from being primarily a coal producer and supplier to a coal-to-chemicals and cleaner fuel integrated energy producer, says its Chairman and Managing Director B Sairam. Sairam said the company expects e-auction premiums to be between 40-45 per cent if the demand persists. Current high imported coal prices may contribute to increased premiums this fiscal. Excerpts:You emphasised that increased coal production and improved quality coal supplies are the company’s core functional areas in meeting the energy demand of the country. What is Coal India’s coal production and supply target for this fiscal?Yes, these twin commitments remain firm in our corporate ethos. After evaluating the anticipated demand from both the power and non-power sectors, the production target is pegged at 815 million tonnes (mt), while the supply target is set at 850 mt. Supply or offtake lists high among our key priorities followed by the production. Coal supplies are placed at the top because we began FY27 with around 130 mt of coal stock at our pitheads, which was 17 per cent of our entire output of 768 mt in FY26. Liquidation of this inventory is our major operational focus.Our effort is to progressively moderate the inventory levels towards more optimal levels of around 10 per cent of the total production, or around 70 mt. Therefore, the emphasis is now on more efficient synchronisation between production and evacuation. We are consciously making efforts to place fresher coal into the market and move towards a more demand-aligned produce-and-sell approach, rather than prolonged stocking before sale.With this change in approach, would the company need to realign its mining activity?This approach does not entail any change in our mining operations. We will, to the extend possible, sell the fresh coal in the market, so our approach of production will be in consonance with the offtake. As per demand, we will produce, so that some threshold levels of stock will always be there. Because we have to be ready to make good of the pertinent demand. Sometimes logistic and mining disruptions occur in the supply chain. What we are doing is we are liquidating our stock in FY27, so that we will maintain stock to a certain threshold level to keep some buffer.