Tata Steel's multi-product Special Economic Zone (SEZ) at Gopalpur has attracted downstream investments in sectors like auto components, gems & jewellery, apparel, speciality chemicals, ores and minerals processing, logistics and warehousing and marine food processing.
This was informed by minister for industries, steel & mines and parliamentary affairs Raghunath Mohanty in response to a query in the state assembly.
"The Centre has already granted in-principle approval for Tata Steel's multi-product SEZ at Gopalpur. Presently, boundary wall construction and road construction at the project site is going on. Tata Steel is developing an industrial park at Gopalpur wherein they will be building a 0.4 million tonne per annum steel rebar mill, 55,000 tonne per annum ferro chrome plant and 1,2 million gallons per day desalination plant at a cost of Rs 1,000 crore”, Mohanty said.
The industrial park has the potential to attract investments of around Rs 15,000 crore.
He also ruled out the possibility of returning land to the farmers at Gopalpur since the state government had already approved the proposal to set up the multi-product SEZ.
The minister said, 2,243 acres of private land and 527 acres of government land have already been acquired for the SEZ.
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While the ferroalloys plant will cost about Rs 200 to 250 crore, the bar mill will be set up at an investment of Rs 750 to Rs 800 crore. This will be the third ferroalloys plant of Tata Steel in Orissa. The company is operating two ferroalloys plants at Bamanipal and Athgarh (through its subsidiary Rawmet) with capacities of 50,000 tonnes per annum each.
For the bar mill, the company intends to get the ingots from Jamshedpur by rail and road. Similarly, the company will source raw material for the ferroalloys plant, which will be a backward integration project for the company's proposed six million tonne plant at Kalinganagar, from its chromite mines in Sukinda valley.
It may be noted Tata Steel had acquired 3,700 acres (including 500 acres for the rehabilitation colony) in mid 1990s for setting up of a 10 million tonne steel plant at Gopalpur. However, it shelved the project and the land was lying vacant.
The company later proposed to set up special economic zone (SEZ) on this patch of land and also got in principle approval from the Centre for the purpose.