P&H Minepro Services, part of the Joy Global Inc, is in talks with the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC) for land at the 1,250-acre industrial park at Kharagpur.
WBIDC officials said, talks were on and a formal proposal had been made to P&H Minepro. The company was engaged in the business of mining equipment and was looking at taking up 20 acres.
The industrial park would house auto-related and heavy machine manufacturing companies who would be given land on lease. The anchor in the industrial park was Telco Construction Equipment Company Limited (Telcon), which had 250 acres. Of the total 1,250 acres around 1,150 acres had been acquired while the balance was in the process of being acquired.
Earlier, Tata Steel associated, TRF had evinced interest in taking up 30-40 acres in the industrial park. However, a TRF spokesperson said, the company was not pursuing the Kharagpur land any more.
A significant part of the land was allotted to Telcon vendors. WBIDC officials said, the Telcon project was nearing completion, but vendors were yet to start work.
Merits mention, Telcon’s project was the twin project of Nano from the Tata Motors stable. Both the projects were announced on the same day. However, the industrial park concept came later, as the state government decided that it would not allocate land to individual companies, but set up industrial parks where companies will become anchor investors in a bid to maximize employment.
Around 20 per cent of the land would be dedicated to common infrastructure. WBIDC was understood to have received several applications for land at the industrial park, but the companies were yet to be confirmed.
The project site was bound by the NH6 connecting Mumbai, Kolkata in the north, NH60 towards Balasore in the East and Orissa Trunk Road leading to Kharagpur. Moreover the Haldia port was within 60km.