Toyota Tsusho Corporation (TTC), a group company of the Japan-based automotive major Toyota Motor Corporation, has proposed to set up a rare earth processing plant at Chhatrpur in south Orissa's Ganjam district at an investment of Rs 150 crore.
The rare earth processing plant will be set up by Toyotsu Rare Earths Limited (TREO), a joint venture between TTC and Indian Rare Earths Limited (IREL).
The rare earth processing plant would come up on 50 acres of land at Chhatrapur. Production is scheduled to take off from May 2011. The plant will have a capacity of 10,000 tonnes per annum.
T Aoki, director of TREO and S N Singh, the company's advisor on Wednesday, gave a detailed presentation to the state Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik at the state secretariat.
The project is aimed at extracting rare earth elements like lanthanum, cerium, samarium, neodymium and praseodymium, which are essential for production of rare earth magnets (strong permanent magnets made from alloys or rare earths) that can be used in hybrid vehicles, computer hard drives, audio speakers and lot of other modern-day electronic products.
IREL which deals with the mining and separation of minerals like rutile, zircon, ilmenite, sillimanite, garnet and monazite from beach sand, would provide the raw material- rare earth chloride needed for the plant.
