The Hindu : Business : JSW to invest Rs. 850 cr. in Vijayanagar plant

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Tuesday, Jul 01, 2008
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JSW to invest Rs. 850 cr. in Vijayanagar plant

Special Correspondent

Opens retail outlet in Bangalore for selling treated steel for various uses

— PHOTO: G. R. N. SOMASHEKAR

COST CUTTING EXERCISE: Y. Siva Sagar Rao, Joint Managing Director and CEO, JSW Steel, addressing a press conference in Bangalore on Monday.

BANGALORE: JSW Steel will invest Rs. 850 crore at its Vijayanagar plant in Karnataka to convert some of the ore waste into a usable grade. This ‘beneficiation plant’ will help the company’s efforts to cut costs, Y. S. S. Rao, Joint Managing Director and CEO said here on Monday.

JSW is looking beyond capacity expansion at its steel plants to reach the total production target of 32 million tonnes a year of steel by 2020. “Raw material security is vital in this sector and negotiations are on to acquire mines in Chile and in Mozambique,” he said.

“A 10-million tonne a year plant will come up in West Bengal and another with equal capacity in Jharkand. Coal mines near the plant have been allocated to us. These two steel plants together will cost Rs. 80,000 crore,” Mr. Rao said. The Salem plant was being expanded to double its capacity to two million tonnes a year. The steel plants in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu together were projected to produce eight million tonnes a year by this year end.

Jayant Acharya, Vice President, Marketing, said the per capita consumption of steel in India was just around 40 kg but was steadily going up along with infrastructure building. JSW has opened a retail outlet here, to become part of a nationwide chain of 50 outlets, selling treated steel for various uses.

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