Asia's biggest ferrochrome facility to come up at Gopalpur

Tata Steel aims to make Gopalpur the single biggest ferrochrome producing site in Asia through establishment of two units with a combined capacity of 0.3 million tonne per annum (tpa).

The steel firm had earlier announced 55,000 tpa ferrochrome facility at Gopalpur. It has now decided to add another unit of 240,000 tpa capacity.

“It will be the largest ferrochrome producing complex at a single location in Asia”, said Arun Misra, vice president (Gopalpur project) of Tata Steel.

The company has a 55,000 tpa ferrochrome plant at Bamnipal in Odisha, which is now closed due to raw material problem..

The first unit of the two ferrochrome plants at Gopalpur is all set to start operation by March 2015, he said. The work on the second unit would start after getting the environment clearance from the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF), he said. In both the units, the company would invest around Rs 1200 crore including Rs  400-crore on the first unit and Rs 800 crore on the second one.

Tata Steel is developing an industrial park at Gopalpur. Spread over 2970 acres of land, the industrial park is a multi-product Special Economic Zone (SEZ). As an anchor investor, the steel major has decided to set up two ferrochrome plants on around 400 acres of land.

Initially, the company proposed to set up one ferrochrome plant, a 0.4 million tpa re-bar mill and de-salination plant to cater to the need of water for the industries to come up in the park.

“Instead of setting up the re-bar mill, we have decided to establish a second ferrochrome unit with higher capacity”, said Misra. He said, the company would harvest the rain water to utilize it in the first ferrochrome unit. “We are also discussing with the irrigation department for water sources for the industries in the park”, he stated.Development of the SEZ is in an advanced stage, Misra said. Singapore-based consultant Jurong was developing its master plan. A team of the company had visited the site recently.

Gopalpur is now the top priority for the company for which Tata Group’s chairman Cyprus Mistry had visited the area last month, he added.