Orissa Mineral Development Corporation (OMDC) and Bisra Stone Lime Co, the state-run firms under the Steel Ministry, have drawn up investment plans worth Rs 1,000 crore for setting up pelletisation and cement plants, and expanding capacities.
"OMDC and BSLC, have modernisation and upgradation plans. They will be making sufficient investments to the tune of Rs 1,000 crore to achieve forward integration in terms of pelletisation, sponge iron and cement plant," Steel Secretary P K Rastogi said.
Rastogi did not give a time-frame for these investments. It is understood that plants would come up in a phased manner by 2012 at their existing sites.
OMDC, which has estimated iron ore reserves of 200 million tonnes (MT), will set up a one-million tonne per annum (MTPA) pelletisation plant to convert the ore into pellets, used in making steel. The plant would cost OMDC about Rs 900 crore, he said. It will expand capacity to produce sponge iron from 100 lakh per tonne to 300 lakh per tonne.
It also plans to set up a ferro-alloy and ferro-manganese plants as it has manganese reserves of about 44 MT, he said.
BSLC will set up a 1-MTPA cement plant as it has limestone reserves of 367 MT and dolomite of about 280 MT.
The forward-integration plans of the two firms as a whole will benefit from the managerial expertise of its new parent Rashtriya Ispat Nigam (RINL), Rastogi said.
The government last week decided to hand over the management control of three sick PSUs — Eastern Investments (EIL), OMDC and BSLC — to Rashtriya Ispat Nigam to make their operations profitable.
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The government also decided to wind up operations of Karanpura Development Co and Scott & Saxyby.
The five PSUs — Orissa Mineral Development Corp, Bisra Stone Lime Co, Karanpura Development Co, Scott & Saxyby, Eastern Investments — are known as Bird Group of companies.
Rastogi termed the restructuring a "complex" but mutually beneficial exercise. "All the companies ... As well as the employees will be immensely benefited under the top professional management of RINL having tremendous experience in steel making," he said.
RINL, he said, will also get benefited by way of having "first time a part fulfilment of their objective of getting raw material security".
EIL, an investment firm owns majority stake of OMDC and BSLC, while RINL will now be having 51 per cent stake in EIL.