Vedanta to raise Sesa Goa capacity

Anil Agarwal-promoted Vedanta Resources on Tuesday said it will invest Rs 3,000 crore over the next three years to enhance Sesa Goa capacity, the company in which it recently acquired a majority stake.

The iron ore mining capacity of Sesa Goa, largest private miner of the mineral, will be expanded further to 20-25 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) from 12.2 mt, Vedanta Vice-Chairman Navin Agarwal said on Tuesday.

He said Sesa Goa's pig iron manufacturing capacity would also be jacked up to one mtpa from 2.92 lakh tonnes per annum. Metallurgical capacity would be enhanced to 7.5 lakh tonnes per annum from 3.22 lakh tonnes.

"The expansion will be undertaken through de-bottlenecking and will be completed over a period of three years with a total investment of Rs 3,000 crore," Agarwal said.

Meanwhile, Vedanta Resources is also building production capacity of one million tonnes each in aluminium, copper, zinc and lead. It is also enhancing its power generation capacity to 10,000 mw from just over 3,000 mw currently.

This will be completed in five years, he said. "Of our planned investment of nearly $15 billion, we have completed investment of $2.6 billion in the first phase. The second phase of investment of nearly $5.4 billion is now underway," he said.

According to Agarwal, Vedanta is investing $1 billion in Zambia to triple its copper mining capacity to 7.5 mt. A new smelter of three lakh tonnes capacity would also come up there.