Bhushan Steel granted prospecting license for 280.75 ha.

The Orissa government has granted Prospecting License (PL) in favour of Bhushan Steel Ltd (BSL), over an area of 280.755 hectares spread over Marsuan,Tiriba and Narasinghapur villages in Keonjhar district. This follows the Centre’s prior approval to the proposal.

The company will have to deposit a fee for field measurement of the PL area and a survey map will be prepared. After the Director of Mines (DoM) authenticates the survey map, the collector of the concerned district would execute the PL, sources said.

The state government had recommended for issue of PL in favour of BSL in july 2008, after the company fulfilled the eligibility conditions for mineral concession. Subsequently, it was issued the terms and conditions for grant of PL after the centre accorded prior approval to the state’s recommendation, sources added.

BSL is setting up a 3 million tonne integrated steel plant at Meramundali in Dhenkanal district.While the company has already attained a production capacity of 1.5 million tonne, it hopes to attain a capacity of 2.2 million tonne per annum in the beginning of the next year.

During the second phase, BSL targets to attain a capacity of 5 million tonne per annum by October 2012.It has already invested more than Rs 6000 crore in its steel project at Meramundali and more than 1000 persons have been employed directly by the company there. It has achieved significant progress in the land acquisition front with the acquisition of 1700 acres out of the 2000 acres of land required for its project.

Recently, the company signed two agreements with Japan’s Sumitomo Metal Industries for sourcing technical know-how and for marketing tie-up for selling the produce of Dhenkanal plant.The state-of-the-art plant will make Bhushan Steel the first Indian company to produce high quality auto grade steel sheets in the country.As per the provisions of the agreement, Sumitomo Metals will introduce the global quality practices in the production process of BSL plant at Meramundali.

It may be noted, the Orissa government has recommended nine cases for grant of mineral concession to the Union government, which include Posco India, Adhunik Metalicks, Sree Metalliks, SMC Power Generation, Deepak Steel and Power, OCL Iron and Steel Ltd, Action Ispat and Power Ltd and JSL (formerly Jindal Stainless Ltd).