Steel Authority planning 12-mn tonne plant in Jharkhand

KOLKATA - The state-owned Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) is planning to set up a 12-million tonne plant in Jharkhand, the company said here Tuesday.

“We have a plan for a greenfield plant in Jharkhand on our radar,” said company chairman S.K. Roongta.

SAIL recently received in-principle approval for renewing mining lease for 810 million tonnes of iron ore reserves at the Chiria mines in Jharkhand from the state government after a delay of several years.

“The Jharkhand government would probably be identifying another 200 million tonne reserve at Chiria, which we plan to develop,” Roongta told reporters on the sidelines of a seminar organised by Indian Institute of Foreign Trade and National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council (NMCC).

The company is also looking to acquiring licences for coking coal mines abroad and is in talks with companies in Australia, New Zealand, Mozambique, the US and Indonesia, he said.

“We are looking at both operation and exploration licenses. We want to secure 30-40 percent of our coking coal needs through acquisitions, though no deals have been closed as yet,” Roongta added.

The company’s annual coking coal requirement is 15 million tonnes.

SAIL has a capital expenditure plan of Rs.10,000 crore for 2009-10 but there would be no capacity addition during the year, he said.

However, by 2012 its annual capacity that now stands at 14 million tonnes of “saleable steel” would go up by nine million tonnes.