India: Vizag Steel and KIOCL Sign MoU for Setting Up Pellet Plant

Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL), Visakhapatnam Steel Plant and KIOCL Limited, Kudremukh Iron Ore Company Limited (under the Ministry of Steel) signed an Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on 6th January, 2018 at Mangalore to set up a Joint Venture Company for Pellet Plant Project in the adjacent to the plant premises of Visakhapatnam Steel Plant at Visakhapatnam.

Mr. P Madhusudan, CMD, RINL and Mr. M V Subba Rao, CMD, KIOCL, exchanged the MOU documents in the august presence of Sri Chaudhary Birender Singh, Honourable Union Ministry of Steel and Smt Aruna Sharma, Secretary of Steel. Sri Wilson David, Executive Director (Projects)-Technology, RINL and Sri V Bobrag Jayaharn, Executive Director(Projects),KIOCL signed the MOU documents on behalf of RINL and KIOCL respectively.

Pellets will be produced by utilizing iron ore fines which will be supplied from either mines situated at Bailadila, Chhattisgarh or Bellary, Karnataka. Part of raw material requirement for Blast Furnaces of RINL will be met with these pellets. The capacity of the proposed plant will be initially 1.2 MnT pa with provision to expand further as per requirement.

RINL fulfills its iron ore requirement from NMDC's Bailadila mines in Chhattisgarh. The steel maker was running on low inventories after K-K railway line was damaged and it participated in OMC e-auction to make up for iron ore shortage. However with operations in K-K line getting restored, Vizag Steel is sourcing material from NMDC, Chhattisgarh.

KIOCL runs a pellet plant of 3.5 MnT PA capacity in Mangalore. The pellet maker has sharply raised the production of Iron ore pellet at Manglore based plant and has crossed 1 MnT in H1 FY18 against 0.24 MnT same period H1 FY 17.