(September 9, 2014)Tata Steel expects to commence work on its ferro-alloys plant at Gopalpur in south Odisha by March 2015, which is also the timeline for commissioning of its three million tonne steel capacity at Kalinganagar where the company is putting up a six mtpa steel plant.

“The first phase of our Kalinganagar steel project will be commissioned by March 2015. We are also going to start work on the first unit of the ferro-alloys plant by March next year,” said Tata Steel managing director T V Narendran.

Narendran called on chief minister Naveen Patnaik today to apprise him on the progress of the steel maker's projects at Kalinganagar and Gopalpur.

Tata Steel is the anchor tenant for the Gopalpur Special Economic Zone (SEZ) spread on an area of 2,952 acres. It had earlier announced to set up a 50,000 tonne per annum ferrochrome plant and one 400,000 tpa rebar mill over an area of 400 acres of land there. The steel firm had committed an investment of Rs 1,000 crore on these two projects which would initially create employment for 1,000 people. While the ferroalloys plant will cost Rs 200-250 crore, the rebar mill will entail an investment of Rs 750 to Rs 800 crore.

To draw investors to the SEZ, Tata Steel is planning to have roadshows in South East Asia region.

“In the next 2-3 months, we will be conducting roadshows in South-East Asia to attract investors for the Gopalpur SEZ. Our team has already been to Singapore and Thailand to pull investors. We are presently getting the master plan ready for the SEZ by Jurong (Singapore-based consultancy firm),” Narendran said. Investors would be wooed across sectors like IT, chemicals, electronics, textile and gems and jewellery.

Land of around 3,000 acres was acquired by Odisha Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (Idco) for an integrated steel mill originally proposed by Tata Steel in 1995. But later, the steel maker shelved the steel plant .

On shutdown of its Noamundi iron ore mine in Jharkhand, he said, “We are sorting out the issue with the Jharkhand government. There is no dearth of iron ore in the country. We are carrying operations on available inventory. Besides, we have also placed orders for some imports.”

The Noamundi mine meets around a third of Tata Steel’s total iron ore requirement of 15 million tonne a year. Tata Steel went for a shutdown of the mine last week on orders from the Jharkhand government that followed the Centre’s July 18 directive, asking states to clamp down on mines operating under second or third deemed renewals of leases.

• [Editor:Juan]