The government is expected to grant green signal to NMDC's acquisition of 50% stake in Australia's Legacy Iron Ore at the next meeting of the Cabinet, which is slated later this week. The state-owned iron ore-miner has already announced acquisition of 50 per cent equity in Legacy Iron Ore, a listed gold and base metals exploration entity in the Australian Stock Exchange, for Australian dollar 18.9 million. Legacy Iron Ore is endowed with more than one billion tonne of magnetite resource.
This is the first acquisition by NMDC, which aims to raise its iron ore production capacity to 48 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) by 2014-15 from current installed capacity of 32 mtpa. Post the acquisition of Legacy, NMDC is also eyeing more acquisitions in Brazil, Mozambique, Russia, USA and South Africa.
