The Hindu Business Line : JSW Steel plans to expand capacity

JSW Steel Ltd, part of the Rs 8,000-crore O. P. Jindal Group, is planning to invest Rs 80,000 crore to add a 20 million tonnes capacity. With this, it plans to emerge as a 32 million tonnes a year capacity steel major by 2020, a company official said on Thursday.

Steel plants with capacity of 10 million tonnes each would be set up in West Bengal and Jharkhand.Each of these plants would involve an investment of Rs 40,000 crore, Mr Jayant Acharya, President (Sales and Marketing) told Business Line here. JSW had signed Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) with the Governments of West Bengal and Jharkhand recently to set up these two green-field projects.

The company’s ongoing capacity expansion at Vijaynagar in Karnataka will be completed by September 2008. With an investment between Rs 18,000 and 20,000 crore, its capacity is being expanded from the existing 3.8 million tonnes to 6.8 million tonnes and then eventually to 12 million tonnes by 2010, he said. It is already producing one million tonne of steel at Salem, Tamil Nadu.

By 2020, the Group expects its steel-making capacity to go up to 32 million tonnes a annum. For its power and mining sector forays, the Group was looking at acquiring coal mines at Mozambique in Africa and Indonesia in South-East Asia. The company is currently setting up base to start operations in Jaigad in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra and another at Barmer in Rajasthan. In all, it is currently targeting production of a total of 3,000 megawatt in different States.

Mr Acharya, who was here to inaugurate Gujarat’s first JSW exclusive showroom, which is its fifth in India, also said the company is set to open 600 showrooms across all districts in India in a couple of years to sell quality and branded steel to customers. In Gujarat, it would set up three more showrooms at Mehsana, Surat and Vadodara shortly. At present, it has two in Hubli (Karnataka), and one in Jaipur and Kolhapur each.

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