Tata Steel turnover set to touch Rs1 lakh cr

To invest Rs 40,000 cr in Jamshedpur, Kalinganagar projects.

The Tata Steel group, comprising Tata Steel and Corus, will post a turnover of Rs 1 lakh crore by the end of March 2008.

Addressing the media, B Muthuraman, managing director, Tata Steel, said, the group was expected to post a turnover of Rs lakh crore by the end of the current financial year. He said the Corus acquisition in the short-term had put pressure on EBIDTA margins but would double in the next five years. "The second wave of synergies between Tata Steel and Corus will help towards doubling the EBIDTA margins," he said.

Back home, Tata Steel has lined up major investments for expansion of the Jamshedpur plant and for the Kalinganagar greenfield project.

The MD said the company would invest Rs 20,000 crore in the Jamshedpur plant for scaling up capacity from five million tonnes to 10 million tonnes. The company has already spent Rs 6,000 crore on increasing capacity from five to seven million tonnes.

The investment in Kalinganagar will be around Rs 20,000 crore. Both the projects are likely to be completed by 2010.

Speaking about the delay in the greenfield projects in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, Muthuraman said the latter was facing problems on land acquisition while the former was delayed due to delay by the state government in announcing a rehabilitation and resettlement policy.

He said the work on Chhattisgarh project was to start in 2008 and would be commissioned in 2012. The Jharkhand project, which is likely to commence in 2009, will start operations by 2013.

Muthuraman also announced a new project in Gopalpur today. Tata Steel, which already has 3,000 acres in Gopalpur, is planning to set up a galvanizing and colour coating line with a capacity of 150,000 tonnes at an investment of Rs 250 crore.

The new unit will come up at the special economic zone (SEZ) proposed by the steel major and notified by the Union government. Muthuraman said it could be a multi-product SEZ and as a first step, Tata Steel had decided to set up the galvanizing line. Tata Steel was looking to rope in partners to develop the infrastructure for the project.