RINL mulls steel plant as JV with state

Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd (RINL) has said it is planning to set up a 3 million tonne capacity steel plant under a joint venture with Karnataka. The RINL, which runs the Vishakapatnam Steel Plant, a Navratna company, has been eyeing to utilise the existing facilities of Kudremukh Iron ore Comany Ltd to set up the plant.

Under a Supreme Court order, which banned mining in the eco-sensitive Western Ghats region, Kudremukh plant was shut down about five years ago.

The investment in the proposed JV would be in the order of about Rs 15,000 crore, RINL CMD Pradip Kumar Bishnoi told reporters after launching its Rural Dealership Scheme in Karnataka.

KIOCL has some fine dumps of iron ore which it has not used and RINL is planning to utilise it. KIOCL also owns a pellet plant at Mangalore, which the Vizag steels is keen on running, he said. Bishnoi, however, clarified that his company was not looking at any mining activity in the Kudremukh area and would seek mining rights at a place to be granted by the state in the event of the project taking off.

He said that the company at its Vizag plant would be setting up a four million tonne capacity Special Products plant, investing about Rs 25,000 crore by 2015.

“The process of setting up of this plant has begun. Consultants have already been appointed. Report should be in place within two or three months,” Bishnoi said.

He said that hitherto RINL had been producing long products and wanted to enter the area of manufacturing flat products like seamless tubes of large diameter of 200-300 metres, used by oil field, gas distribution and boiler tube industry. It would also be rolling out cold rolled non-grain oriented and cold rolled grain oriented products at the proposed plant, for which it was scouting for technical know-how, he said.

The existing production capacity of 3 million tons would be expanded to 6.3 million tons by 2011-12 and in another two years to 7.3 million tonnes, Bishnoi said. It has plans to expand the production capacity to 20 million tons by 2020-21, he said.

To encourage rural distribution of steel, the company has appointed 125 dealers in rural areas and ten in Karnataka. The number of dealers in Karnataka would be ramped up to 200 in the near future, he said.

As part of its corporate social responsibility, RINL gave away school kits to primary school children of an Urdu school in the city and also financial assistance to ten students that it has adopted.