Tisco is expanding its presence in ferro chrome production and has recently made a bid for take over of ferro chrome plant of Industrial Development Corporation of Orissa which has two furnaces with a capacity of about 18,000 tonnes. Tisco also exports chrome ore to China for direct sales and also for conversion into ferro chrome and is looking for more opportunities.

It also wants to step up ferro chrome production from the present around 1,00,000 tonnes to 2,00,000 and even 3,00,000 tonnes.

West Bengal is also emerging as the biggest center for ferro alloys production and can be a big market for the chrome ore and manganese ore of Tisco. In iron ore Tisco operates in two places. In Noamundi Iron Mine, district Singbhum of Bihar it has a capacity of around five million tones with concentrating and beneficiation plants. The second group of mines are in Joda, Orissa where there is a capacity of around two million tonnes with concentrating and beneficiation plants. Both the mines produce lumpy ore above 67% Fe and fines above 65% which are being used by Tisco in its steel works.

So Tisco has premium grade iron ores which can be sold in the world market. Infrastructure for production, beneficiation and dispatch is already there and it a question of expanding this. The port of shipment could be Paradip or Haldia which has now started handling iron ore and coal shipments. There is also increasing demand for iron ore in the local market from sponge iron and pig iron producers and also for washed coal which Tisco can supply.Government is also now permitting direct shipments of iron ore by producers bypassing MMTC which is the canalizing agency. Tisco claims that it is a low cost producer of ores as compared tow world costs. According to AME Mineral Economics of Sydney world iron or industry is trying to cut costs and the average cost of production on a fob basis for agglomerated and non-agglomerated products fell between 1997 and 1999 from $15.22 per tonne to $13.15.

India can easily compete with the above cost of production but is the freight and shipping cost which often renders Indian iron ore costly in the world market. The AME report states that prices of iron ore may rise during the next year but over the next five years they will continue to fall in real terms. "Prices will be underpinned by supply demand balances, cost of production and the Japanese steel mills' requirement for reliable supplies of quality fed for optimal operation of their blast furnaces."

The recent acquisition of North Limited by Rio Tinto will make it the second largest producer of iron ore in the world after CVRD of Brazil. It will also reduce the iron producers in Australia from three to two and Australia's iron ore production which is set to increase to 194 million tonnes will be sold by two instead of three.

Japanese buyers are unhappy over this development as they will have less numbers to play with and thus reduce the price. India which on an average exports about 30 million tonnes of iron ore per year now appears to be emerging as a larger player as lot of other producers are interested to get in.

IISCO's privatisation and its vast reserves of iron ore and cooking coal would also add to world supplies, if exploited properly.