Land buy for Tata Steel's Orissa plant done

 "We will soon place orders for equipments for the Rs 15,000 crore project. We have got the bids and negotiations with different parties are going on. We should finalise the order by July," B Muthuraman, managing director of Tata Steel, today said.

 The Orissa project is part of the Rs 67,000 crore that the steel major is investing for three greenfield projects. The other two are the Rs 12,000 crore project in Chattisgarh with a capacity of 5 million tonne per annum and the third greenfield plant in Jharkhand, entailing an investment of Rs 40,000 crore for a 12 million tonne capacity.

 Tata Steel is also investing Rs 4,500 crore to expand its Jamshedpur plant capacity by 1.8 million tonne, which should be completed by August 2008. "By the end of this financial year, the total capacity should increase by half a million tonne to five million tonne per annum," Muthuraman said, denying plans of a rights issue to finance the projects.

 The company has earmarked about 3,000 acres for the Chattisgarh project and identified the area for the Jharkhand one, which will be spread over 5,000 acres. It has spent about Rs 70 crore for acquiring the 3,000
acres in Orissa.