RINL to rope in consultant to buy mine in Oman

Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL), the holding company of Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, has decided to appoint a reputed consultant for acquiring limestone mines in Oman.

"We are shortly going to appoint a consultant for working out modalities for acquiring a mine with limestone reserves of about 100 million tonne in Oman," Y Siva Sagar Rao, chairman and managing director, VSP, told Business Standard.

Rao recently visited Oman along with the officials of steel ministry to hold talks with the Oman government in this regard.

VSP consumes about one million tonne of SMS grade limestone a year. The requirement is expected to go up to five million tonne by 2018 because of plant expansion plans. The company is importing limestone from other countries despite its availability in Rajasthan as it is lower in quality and freight charges are very high, according to Rao.

"If we can acquire mines in Oman, we will get high quality limestone at significantly lower cost," he added. VSP is proposing to increase the plant capacity to 16 million tonne by 2018 from the existing 3.5 million tonne.

Already, Rs 8,600-crore first phase work on three million tonne capacity expansion is going on and the VSP board has recently approved the second phase expansion for another two million tonne. The final aim is to hike the capacity to 16 million tonne by 2018 by which time SMS grade limestone requirement will go up beyond five million tonne a year.

Another public sector undertaking, SAIL, will also take some stake in the limestone mine proposed to be acquired, he revealed.