Tata Steel Ltd on Thursday said its unit Tata Steel Global Minerals Holdings Pte Ltd had raised its holding in Australia?s Riversdale Mining Ltd to 19.38 % through market purchases. Financial details were, however, not disclosed.
According to reports, the Tata Steel subsidiary already holds about 15% stake in Riversdale Mining.
Tata Steel?s shares on Thursday were up 1.29% and closed at Rs 385.10 on the Bombay Stock Exchange.
Riversdale Mining is a joint venture partner of Tata Steel for a coal project in Mozambique, where the production is expected to start in 2011. Tata Steel had in September 2008 bought 7.29% additional stake in Austra
lia-based Riversdale Mining for a sum of $120.7 million through its Singapore subsidiary. RML is a mining company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. RML has acquired coal exploration tenements at the Tete-Moatize area in Mozambique, whose combined size is now in excess of 250,000 hectares.
In Tete province, the Benga coal project is being developed as a joint venture between RML (65%) and Tata Steel Global Minerals Holdings Pte Limited (35%).
In April 2009, Riversdale issued an updated resource and reserve statement for the Benga coal project, which gave an estimated coal resource of 4 billion tonne, including 1,033.9 million tonne of measured and indicated resources, of which 893.4 million tonne are at a depth of less than 500 metres.
In the same month, the project got approval from the Mozambique government for the mining contract, which establishes the terms governing the development and implementation of the project. Tata Steel, apart from coal project in Mozambique (Riversdale), has coal mining project in Australia. Tata Steel has a joint venture with Vale inj Australia for coking coal mine. Similarly, Tata Steel had signed an equal stake JV agreement with Sail for coal mining activities in India. It also had signed a JV agreement with members of Al Bahja Grop in Oman for mining of Limestone.
