A high-level team from India is likely to be deputed to South Korea shortly by the Union Ministry of Steel to explore the feasibility of the establishment of a greenfield steel plant on the premises of the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant by Hyundai.
Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL), the corporate entity of VSP which owns 20,000 acres at Ukkunagaram, has also shown interest to enter into a joint venture with the Hyundai if the project gets the nod from the two countries.
A team of Hyundai officials and the Ambassador of South Korea visited the VSP on October 23 last year on an invitation of the Prime Minister’s Office, sources told The Hindu.
The Hyundai team had sought 3,000 acres of surplus land, now at the disposal of the VSP. The land if given for the project will become the equity share of the RINL in the proposed joint venture. Sources said Hyundai had evinced interest to set up a three million tonne special grade steel plant to meet the requirement of its automobile products with an investment of ₹30,000 crore.
The RINL management also confirmed that they had the preliminary level talks.
Parley on
Now, the government-to-government talks are being held. The RINL produces long products and the proposed plant wants to lay emphasis on flat steel.
After completing 6.3 million tonne expansion project with an investment of ₹8,300 crore, the RINL has invested ₹4,000 on capital repairs and installation of Pulverised Coal Injection (PCI) technology on blast furnaces to improve their efficiency so as to take the total production capacity to 7.3 million tonne per annum.
Iron ore
At present, the RINL is meeting its iron ore requirement from National Mineral Development Corporation’s Bailadilla mines. It has plans to reduce dependence on the NMDC by exploring alternative options by sourcing it from Odisha and other States.
The RINL which clocked a turnover of ₹14,687 crore during April-December last year is expecting to cross ₹21,000-crore mark during the current financial year.