Arcelor Mittal delays Odisha and Jharkhand steel plants
The plants were to come up in Jharkhand and Orissa involving an investment of $ 20 billion.
“What I can say is production is not coming up before 2014,” ArcelorMittal India, CEO Vijay Bhatnagar said on the sidelines of a conference on steel organised by Ficci and the steel ministry.
The first phase was supposed to be completed by 2012. The company plans to build 12 million tonne capacity (in two phases) steel plants each in the Orissa and Jharkhand. It had planned to invest $ 20 billion over the next 10 years to build these two steel plants.
In the initial phase both these plants was to have a capacity of 6 million metric tons each. Mr Bhatnagar said that the company could cut the capacity to 3 million metric tonnes for the initial phase. “ Investments could naturally come down in the same proportion,” he said.
But, Mr Bhatnagar made it clear that there will be no change to final planned capacity.
“The main reason is the economic downturn. The second reason is there have been certain procedural delays. Cycle times for get land and mining resources were much more than we had anticipated,” he said.
The company has got a mining license in Jharkhand and is working to get its mining plan approved, he said. As far as land for setting up the plant is considered Jharkhand has offered the company 1,058 acres of land, but it requires around 10,000 acres. In case of Orissa though the Centre has offered land, it is yet to be transferred in the company’s name.
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