NMDC’s proposed plant gets land from Chattisgarh govt

R Ravichandran

Hyderabad, Dec 10: The much-delayed public sector mining major National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) Limited’s proposed Rs 300-crore pig iron benefication plant will finally see the light of the day with the Chattisgarh government recently allotting the necessary land.

NMDC has received the necessary approval for acquiring close to 500 acres of land in Nagarnar village in Bastar district from the Chattisgarh Environment Protection Board recently for setting up a 3 lakh tonne per annum pig iron benefication plant, senior official of the NMDC told The Financial Express here.

Earlier, the project was hanging fire due to problems on environment, rural rehabilitation and other local issues, the official said. “The entire project cost would be funded through internal accruals,” he added.

Claimed to be first of its kind project to use the advanced Russian Romelt technology to manufacture pig iron from iron ore tailings (slime), the fine product of iron ore combined with many impurities get washed out of the production, while mining Bailadila mines, which is considered to be a major environment problem, the official said.

Keeping in mind the environment threat, NMDC would construct the tailing dams to store the slime which comes out with water. With the use of Romelt technology, the company would manufacture pig iron from the accumulated slime stored in the tailing dams, the official pointed out.

Following the clearance, NMDC is expected to commence the project soon and would take two years to complete. According to the official, the advantages of using this fluid-based technology are that it can turn any iron ore waste into pig iron, which presently needs non-coking coal.

It also will produce surplus electricity while fluid gas, which can feed back into grid and would lead to total utilisation of all the iron bearing waste from the mines thus providing conservation mechanism for optimum use of non-renewable resource, he said. For the year-ended March 31, 2001, NMDC posted a net profit of Rs 235 crore on a turnover of Rs 1,013 crore.