National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) is in talks with Rashtriya Ispat Nigam (RINL) and Steel Authority of India to set up an integrated two million tpa steel plant, with an investment of around Rs.4,000 crore.

The steel plant project is a part of NMDC's overall Rs.9,000 crore investment plan. A location survey is currently being carried out for the proposed steel plant in Chhattisgarh where NMDC operates iron ore mines. There is also a  possibility of the increasing the capacity of the steel unit, if RINL and SAIL participate.

While SAIL is working to increase its capacity from 14.5 million tpa to 20 million tpa, RINL has began work on its expansion plan from the current 3.5 million tpa to 6 million tpa in the next few years. NMDC has also started work on setting up a one lakh tpa sponge iron plant and a power plant at an investment of Rs.90 crore at Jagdalpur in Chhattisgarh. Apart from this, work on the proposed pelletisation plants at Bailadila and Donimalai has begun with an investment of Rs.300 crore and will be through a joint venture with RINL.

NMDC will also pick up Rs.1,000 crore of equity in the proposed super joint venture of five public sector companies for prospecting overseas coal blocks. RINL, SAIL, NTPC and Coal India are the other partners of the special purpose vehicle (SPV) that is likely to have a corpus of around $5 billion. The corpus will be leveraged to raise money for acquisitions of coal blocks abroad which includes countries like Australia, Malaysia and Indonesia

While SAIL and Coal India are likely to put in similar amounts towards equity, RINL will pump in Rs.500 crore and NTPC is yet to finalise the amount it will put in.

Also See:

NMDC signs iron ore mining pact with Chhattisgarh (04-Aug-06)