Ist gold refinery firm will be in Hyderabad soon

Hyderabad will soon have a gold refinery, south India’s first and India’s second such facility to process the unrefined gold to be imported form Africa, Telangana Government officials said.

The State Government has received a proposal for setting up the gold refinery from a private sector company which specialises in refining of gold and silver.

A second proposal for a similar project was also submitted by another unnamed company and both of them were being considered.

If the proposal gets the nod from the Board of Approvals of the Central Government, it will come up at Kongar Kalan village near Ibrahimpatnam in the outskirts of Hyderabad on 30 acres of land belonging to the Telangana State Industrial Infrastructure Corporation. Officials expect that the refinery will give a boost to the gems and jewelry manufacturing sector in the State as the Government was also considering proposals to set up ten jewellery processing units.

State Principal Secretary, Industries, Jayesh Ranjan said that these units will be set up by different companies and will give a boost to the gems and jewelry exports from the present Rs 6000 crore a year.

India’s only gold refinery at present was situated at Nadaun in Himachal Pradesh.

The proposals have come at a time when the recent massive bank scam resulted in shutting down of Gitanjali Gems park and other units of Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi in Hyderabad. This resulted in the lost of employment for nearly 1000 people. Officials hope that these displaced workers will be rehabilitated in the new units.

Without identifying the names of the companies which have proposed setting up gold refineries officials said that one of them had an annual turnover of Rs 25000 crore and another Rs 33000 crore.

In the first phase one company proposes to set up a refinery with a capacity to process 30 tons of gold and 100 tons of silver with an investment of Rs 550 crore and in the second phase it will invest another Rs 750 crore to increase the processing capacity to 50 tons of gold and 150 tons of silver per year.

The representatives of one of the companies visited the Kongara Kalan village to see the proposed site for the refinery which will  import the unrefined gold from Africa by Air and it will be transported from the Shamshabad International Airport to the refinery. Locally refined gold will then be supplied to the jewelry processing units which presently rely on the refined gold imported from abroad.

The proposed jewelry processing units will come up in a special economic zone on an area of 25 acres and the proposal will be submitted to the Board of Approval before its meeting by the end of May or early June, officials said.