Thaindian News

Kolkata, Aug 5 (IANS) Tata Steel would pump in Rs.8,000 crore this fiscal for modernisation and capacity expansion of its Jamshedpur plant to 10 million tonnes from 6.8 million tonnes, a top company official said here Friday.

“We have undertaken a Rs.12,000 crore expansion project in Jamshedpur. We invested Rs.4,000 crore last year. We will invest the remaining Rs.8,000 crore this year,” Tata Steel Managing Director H.M. Nerurkar said at a media meet here.

The modernisation project, slated to be completed by March 2012, is progressing on schedule and would help the company meet the rising demand.

He said the Jamshedpur plant modernisation would constitute the company’s major investment in the current fiscal.

Nerurkar said the company needed to infuse Rs.45,000 crore to complete all its pending projects globally.

He said the company has no immediate plans to hike steel prices from the present rate of around Rs.5,800 per tonne.

Asked about the company’s Gopalpur SEZ project, Nerurkar said the 15,000 tonne-capacity Ferro Chrome plant and 0.6 million tonne-capacity Steel Rolling Mill unit were likely to be operational from the second half of the 2012-13 fiscal after receiving the environment ministry’s nod.

He said the proposed project in Kalinganagar which would meet the company’s additional need for iron ore, would commence exploration later this year.

However, there was little progress with regard to other projects in Jharkhand, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and Vietnam.

Turning to the company’s global operations, he said a feasibility report has been sought from two mining areas of Qubec in north Canada. Though the company now has a global debt equity of 1.5:1, it would endeavour to keep it at 1:1 in future ventures, Nerurkar said.