With the boards of the Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited and the A.P. Mineral Development Corporation clearing the proposal for forming a joint venture to undertake mining of iron ore in Kukunoor block in West Godavari district, the Ministry of Steel has been approached to get clearance from the NITI Aayog.
The merger will give RINL, the corporate entity of the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, 51% equity in the joint venture. The Kukunoor block is estimated to have 25 to 30 million tonne of high quality iron ore. RINL is the only major steelmaker without captive mines and the formation of the joint venture will expedite the process to source part of its iron ore requirement from the mining site in West Godavari, about 200 to 220 km from the steel plant.
RINL Chairman-cum-Managing Director P. Madhusudan told The Hindu that as of now there was a small deposit but they believe that the block contained huge deposits of iron ore. He said the mining block is spread over Chhattisgarh and Odisha, which are known to have huge deposits of iron ore and other minerals.
Kukunoor iron ore has 63% Fe. RINL is pinning high hopes on Kukunoor after its proposal to extract iron ore from Bayyaram in Khammam district of Telangana and set up a pelletisation plant received a setback due to the bifurcation of the State.
For producing 6.3 million tonne of steel, RINL needs 10 million tonne of iron ore. It meets its entire requirement from NMDC’s Bailadilla mines in Bastar district of Chattisgarh.
Mine surrendered
Mr. Madhusudan said they had surrendered the mining block sanctioned by the Centre at Bhilwara in Rajasthan after finding it unviable. He said they were getting wholehearted support from Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu for forming the special purpose vehicle at the earliest to take up mining in Kukunoor block.
