Indian firms line up for coal mining joint ventures in Australia

08/10/2011 0 Comments read Business and Trade

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 8.10.2011 (Business Standard): High quality coal, good infrastructure, political stability and the ease of doing business has made Australia the preferred coal supplier for India, with many Indian private companies acquiring mines and setting up joint ventures to tap into the continent’s vast reserves.

“With large high-quality reserves of all coal types, Indian investment is a valuable component in the rapidly expanding Australian coal industry,” Arun Kumar Jagatramka, chairman and managing director of Gujarat NRE Coke, told this correspondent.

Gujarat NRE Coke owns and operates two hard-coking coal mines in New South Wales. It produces 1.5 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) of coking coal and plans to increase it to around six mtpa by 2015. This would make the company one of the top 10 hard-coking coal producers in the world. “With rising demand for coal of all forms and the emerging supply challenges of Indonesia, India should continue to seek opportunities in Australia”, says Jagatramka.

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Veena Sahajwalla honoured for `green steel’ technology

30/09/2011 0 Comments read Environment & Development, Health & Science

Prof. Veena Sahajwalla. Photo Credit: SMaRT@UNSW

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 30.09.2011 (Business Standard): Indian-born engineering professor, Veena Sahajwalla, whose research led to the commercialisation of a world-first “green steel” manufacturing process, has been honoured with the Nokia Innovation Award at the 2011 Telstra NSW Business Women’s Awards here today.

Sahajwalla, who is the Director at the Centre for Sustainable Materials Research and Technology (SMaRT) at The University of New South Wales (UNSW), is helping the materials industries combat environmental challenges with technology that reduces carbon-emissions and uses recycled rubber tyres that would otherwise go to landfill in electric arc furnace (EAF) steelmaking.

Growing up in Mumbai, Sahajwalla didn’t think of anything as waste. “In India, we used and recycled just about everything.” Values ingrained at an early age have paid off. She has been developing an environmentally friendly process that uses recycled rubber tyres as a partial replacement to coal-based carbon for EAF steel making.

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Not quite Harry Potter, but Jodhpur’s broom-makers have tales of their own

26/09/2011 0 Comments read Gender

By Neena Bhandari

Jodhpur (Rajasthan, India), 26.09.2011 (WFS): Lifting her translucent red tie and dye cotton veil, Sunder Devi, 45, dexterously sorts moonjh (Saccharum munja). Nearby her 14-year-old daughter, Kiran, niftily assembles them into brooms. Theirs is one of the 150 families in Jodhpur’s Banjara colony, whose livelihood depends on the humble broom.

Rural women in this western Indian state of Rajasthan have been making brooms from locally available materials to suit their own needs and also for commercial sale. Every three months, Sunder Devi’s husband, Gopal Bhai, goes to Alwar and Etah in the neighbouring state of Uttar Pradesh to buy moonjh.

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