The sharp rise in coal prices over the past four months has put brick kiln owners in Hisar under financial pressure, with the price of A-grade coal rising from around Rs 15,000 to nearly Rs 26,000 per tonne.
At present, first-grade bricks are selling for Rs 8,500 to Rs 9,000 per 1000 bricks, while second-grade bricks are priced at Rs 6,500 to Rs 7,000, and third-grade Rs 4,000 to Rs 4,200.
The Hisar Brick Kiln Association is mulling a revision in prices. With fuel, raw material and labour costs going up, the industry expects the higher production cost to be reflected in retail brick prices when the new season begins, which could have a cascading effect on the overall cost of construction.
Rajbir Singh Boora, chairman of the association, said, “We will incur a cost of around Rs 8,500 per 1,000 bricks. Earlier, it was around Rs 4,000-4,500. How can we make them available at a cheaper price?”
According to the kiln owners, coal is being sourced from abroad and supplied to Haryana through Kandla port in Gujarat. The transportation cost from Gujarat to Hisar is around Rs 3,000 per tonne. Even after paying higher prices, they are facing difficulty in securing adequate supplies, while complaints regarding the quality of coal have also surfaced.
The shortage of alternative agricultural fuel could complicate matters, they said. Though they use agricultural waste from crops such as guar and moong, the production has been lower this year in Hisar, Sirsa, Bhiwani, Mahendragarh and Charkhi Dadri due to poor rainfall.
The operators said the mandated use of paddy straw pellets is also expected to affect the fuel for kilns. The government has increased the prescribed proportion of pellets to be used in the kilns to 30 per cent this year — from 20 per cent in 2025.
Besides fuel costs, the operators are facing higher expenditure on other inputs, said Boora. The prices of soil and labour costs have also gone up. The GST burden on coal has also increased. The applicable rate, which was 5 per cent earlier, is now 18 per cent.
