The Hindu : Business : BEML, Midwest float venture

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Friday, May 25, 2007
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BEML, Midwest float venture

Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD: Bharat Earth Movers Ltd (BEML) on Thursday floated a joint venture along with Midwest Granite Pvt. Ltd. and P. T. Sumber Mitra Jaya of Indonesia to foray into contract mining. The new company, BEML-Midwest Ltd, was formally launched by the Union Minister of State for Coal, Dasari Narayana Rao, here.

BEML will hold 45 per cent, while the remaining two partners will jointly hold 55 per cent in the venture. Chairman and Managing Director of BEML, V. R. S. Natarajan, would also be the chairman of the joint venture whose equity is Rs. 100 crore.

Addressing a press conference here, Mr. Natarajan said the Hyderabad-based joint venture would target development of opencast mines in the range of 10 million tonnes and the business from the contract mining in the next five years would be about Rs. 1,000 crore.

The venture would work closely with NTPC, coal block owners, State electricity boards, and standalone power companies with coal linkages. The JV was in an advanced stage of negotiations for a tie-up with a power generation company, which was already in possession of three coal block licences, for setting up an ultra mega power plant (UMPP), said Mr. Natarajan. He said BEML clocked a revenue of Rs. 2,600 crore in 2006-07, earning a profit after tax of Rs. 110 crore against Rs. 70 crore in the previous year.

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