NMDC may invest Rs 40,000 cr in 8 years for capacity expansion

Hyderabad: State-owned NMDC Ltd plans to invest Rs 40,000 crore in the next eight years to reach a target of 100 million tonnes per annum of iron ore production from the current levels of little over 30 MTPA.

Besides, the company is in the process of setting up a small gold refinery in Tanzania, NMDC's Chairman and Managing Director Narendra Kothari said.

"The total investment will be Rs 40,000 crore in the next eight years. Our vision is to achieve 100 MTPA by 2025. The investment will go into developing new mines, Steel Plant, Legacy Iron ore company (in Australia) and Slurry Pipe line 9 from (Kirandul to Vizag), among others," Kothari told reporters on the sidelines of NMDC's Annual General Meeting here.

He said the company has spent Rs 7,730 crore till last month on the upcoming 3 MTPA Steel Plant in Nagarnar in Chhattisgarh. The total project cost is Rs 15,500 crore.

He also said the Deposit-13 mine, spread over 413.74 hectares of land, being jointly developed by NMDC and Chhattisgarh Mineral Development Corporation (CMDC) got environmental clearance and is expected to come to production in the next two years.

He also said Deposit-4 (also in Chhatisgarh) will take another year or so after Deposit-13 gets into production.

On the Tanzanian Gold mine, Kothari said they are in the process of setting up a small gold refinery in the African country. He, however, did not divulge the investment size.

"Tanzania exploration is going to be complete. We will start mining of gold ore and setting up a small refinery next year. The investment will be very small. We will make a JV there. The final stage of negotiations are going on," he added.

Replying to a query, he said the company is currently looking for assets in Indonesia and South Africa besides some other geographies.

On commodity prices, he opined that the iron ore prices may hover between USD 55 to USD 65 per tonne for some time due to the subdued demand for Steel in global markets.

He, however, said the steel demand may go up in India with the government's thrust on infrastructure sector.

Kothari said the company will not have any problems in undertaking exploration and mining for some of the strategic metals, such as tungsten, if the government asks it do so.