The Centre has granted an iron ore mining lease in Rajasthan to SAIL, the public sector steel major announced on Friday.
The mining will be done in 871 hectares in Bhilwara district. “The mine there has estimated reserves of 120-150 million tonnes (mt) of magnetised iron ore.
We expect to produce two mt of pellets annually from there,” the SAIL Chairman, C.S Verma, told reporters. The mine will be operational in three-four years.
Verma also announced that International Coal Ventures Limited, in which SAIL is a partner, is working to acquire coal properties in the US and Australia, but refused to give a time-frame for the buyout.
Verma said the company was working on Vision 2025 to take SAIL’s production capacity to 50 mt by 2025. The company’s current capacity is around 14 mt. Expansion will require around Rs 1.5 lakh crore.
“Half of this will be through borrowings and remaining from internal accruals,” he added.