The country’s largest iron ore maker, NMDC is planning to increase its iron ore production capacity to 48 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) by 2014-15 from its current installed capacity of 32 MTPA. The company is planning this on back of its proposed capacity expansion which would not only help it in feeding its upcoming steel-making plant in Chhattisgarh but would also partly serve domestic steel makers growing demand.
The state-run company is anticipating that by next year it would start one deposit at Balidala in Chhattisgarh with an annual capacity of 7 MTPA. Also work is going on to develop Kumaraswamy deposits in Karnataka. The company is presently not sure on the expected time-line on when the operations from this deposit would start.
During 2011-12, the company had produced 27.3 million tonnes (MT) of iron ore up from 25.2 MT in the previous year. As on January 01, 2010, it has 1,360.6 MT of iron ore reserves.
