JSW Steel Ltd.

JSW Steel is facing acute shortage of iron ore and for which it has approached six small mining companies in Goa to procure enough to feed its existing steel plant and the proposed pig iron project in the state.

The company has approached H L Nathurmal & Co, a Goa-based iron ore miner and exporter to source iron ore for its Karnataka plant. The company's plant at Vijaynagar (Bellary) in Karnataka which is set to expand to 10 million tonnes (Mt) by the end of this month, currently produces 0.7 (mt) of steel. The capacity would be further expanded to 12 mt. In the last quarter of the financial year 2010-11, the company had already started operation of its sinter plant, two blocks of the four blocks of coke oven, converter, caster and captive power plant (300 Mw) as part of 0.32 Mt expansion plan.

The company requires 20 mt of iron ore to operate to its full capacity, for the existing capacity of 10 Mt. Of this, 25% or 5 million tonnes are supplied through JSW’s captive mines in the state.

Recently, JSW Steel has reported a 2% growth in its crude steel production for May 2011. The production of crude steel increased to 5.77 lakh tonnes in May 2011 as compared to 5.65 lakh tonnes in May 2010.