JSW Steels Limited, which has established a mega integrated steel plant at Toranagal in Ballari district, has put its expansion plans on hold, mainly due to shortage of iron ore.
“Our plan to expand the steel production capacity to 16 million tonnes per annum has been halted in view of non-availability of the required quantum of ore. We will consider executing our expansion plan once we are assured of ore security by way of getting a captive mines or through getting mining lease through auction,” Vinod Nowal, Deputy Managing Director, told The Hindu .
The plant presently has an installed capacity of producing ten million tons of steel per annum operating at around 80 to 90 percent of the capacity due to non-availability of adequate ore. However, the work of increasing the capacity to 12 million tonnes was under way.
“As against the total ore requirement of around 32 million tonnes per annum required by all the steel industries in the State, the production during the previous year was around 18 million tonnes. JSW Steel had to import around six million tons in the last fiscal. If the ore production in the State continues to be below the total requirement, we may have to depend on imports this year too, despite high cost on logistics to maintain our production,” he said.
He underlined the need for the government to get the cap on production of ore increased in addition to 30 million tonnes per annum as fixed by the Supreme Court, besides initiating steps to auction the ‘C’ category mines so that the steel plants would not suffer for want of ore.
To a question, he said that the cost of conversion of ore into steel in JSW was the best.
