Taking forward their proposal to set up a 0.5 million tonne per annum iron ore nugget plant at the Alloy Steel Plant of the Steel Authority of India Ltd. (SAIL) in Durgapur, SAIL and Kobe Steel of Japan entered into a memorandum of agreement (MoA) in Tokyo on Tuesday. The memorandum of understanding (MoU) for this project was signed on November 30, 2010.
Investment
The project entails an investment of Rs.1,500 crore, and was discussed by the SAIL Chairman C. S. Verma during his recent meeting with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee here. The equal joint venture SAIL-Kobe Iron India Pvt. Ltd. has already been incorporated, according to a statement. As per the agreement between the two companies, the plant will use Kobe’s patented ITmK3 technology, and the two companies will be entitled to equal share of the plant’s output for captive use. The acronym stands for iron making technology mark three and the technology enables use of low grade iron ore fines and non-coking coal.
Mr. Verma said that this was the first step in the collaboration, which would be extended to other areas. Steel Minister Beni Prasad Verma, also present in Tokyo on this occasion, said that the technology would utilise the dump iron ore fines, disposal of which had become an environmental issue.
