Australia expects to gain on India's appetite for coking coal considering the projections in the steel sector, which indicates an upward trend, a top official from New South Wales said.
"Coking coal is a major area where India and Australia can have a joint interest. India has a potential to buy the coking coal and we see the potential in terms of exports," Brad Mullard, Executive Director, Minerals, Industry and Investment, New South Wales, Australia, said here.
"The country also anticipates sizeable Indian investment alike from China in the coking coal mining sector. Indian investment are sought after in places like Queensland and NSW, which has coking coal reserves," Mullard, who was in Goa for the recently concluded Global Steel Conference, said.
Gujarat NRE, India's premier mining and coke making company, has already invested and achieved production of around 1.5 million tones per annum (MTPA) of coking coal in the Australia.
"It (Gujarat NRE) has significantly imported coking coal from Australia and 2012 predictions indicate that the major investment would be from them," he said.
Mullard, who represented the Australian government at the Conference, said Gujarat NRE has been undertaking significant expansion which will further upswing the overall coking coal exports to India.
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The statistics by Ahmedabad-based company reveals that the production in Australia is expected to rise to 6 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) in about 3-4 years.
"The company has already invested around 300 million Australian dollars with plans to further invest 500 million Australian dollars for the development of Australian mines," Gujarat NRE company spokesman said at the steel conference.
Mullard said, "India's investment into Australia is in early stages right now but we predict the growth in years to come because of the booming steel industry projections here."
The Australian expert also stated that it is early to predict future growth of exports and investment from India.
"There has been lot of Chinese investment and we expects to see the same trend wherein lot of Indian companies will come with investment," he said.
He said that the ten-year-old China market has witnessed sudden upsurge in last 3-6 years in terms of investments and exports.