KIOCL to rope in PSUs to set up pellet plants in three locations.

KIOCL Ltd, which operates an iron ore pellet plant in Mangaluru, plans to set up iron ore pellet plants at three locations with an estimated total production capacity of 6 million tonnes per annum (mtpa).

The company will have tie-ups with other public sector undertakings such as RINL (Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd) and SAIL (Steel Authority of India Ltd) for establishing the pellet plants.

MV Subba Rao, Chairman and Managing Director of KIOCL, told presspersons in Mangaluru on Monday that KIOCL has signed an MoU with RINL for installing a pellet plant in Visakhapatnam. The proposed plant will have a pellet production capacity of 2 mtpa. The board of KIOCL has already approved the detailed project report of this project, and the RINL has earmarked 75 acres of land for this purpose.

Both KIOCL and RINL put together will invest around Rs. 1,000 crore in this project. He said that the Visakhapatnam plant is expected to be commissioned by March 2021.

To a query, he said the raw materials for the Visakhapatnam project will be sourced either from Odisha or Chhattisgarh.

Apart from this, KIOCL also plans to sign an MoU with SAIL for setting up two more pellet plants. Rao said that KIOCL would soon sign MoU with SAIL to set up two pellet plants at Bokaro and Bhilai. Each pellet plant will have a production capacity of 2 mtpa.

SAIL will provide raw materials and land for establishing these pellet plants. The Bokaro and Bhilai plants are expected to be completed by 2022-23, he said. On the performance of the pellet plant in Mangaluru, Rao said it has the annual capacity to produce 3.5 million tonnes. The pellet production stood at 2.327 million tonnes in 2017-18.

HBL