Sajjan Jindal’s technology play of building a 10 million tonne steel plant on just 4000 acres seems to have prompted Videocon Industries chairman Venugopal Dhoot to double the size of his own project without asking for more land.
On Thursday, Dhoot announced that he had been given the green signal by the West Bengal government to double the capacity of his project to 6m tonne. And his land requirement stays unchanged at 4000 acres.
“We gave a fresh proposal to the government and the government has accepted it. Now we are waiting with what offers the government comes out with in terms of benefit and resource linkage,” Dhoot said.
Dhoot, briefing reporters on the sidelines of a seminar organised by the Bharat Chamber of Commerce and mjunction, said everything except the land requirement had changed.
Investment will go up to Rs 21,000 crore from Rs 15,000 crore earlier, the power plant would now be of 1600mw against 1200mw earlier, while the requirement of coal, iron ore and other raw materials would also increase.
Videocon’s plant is coming up at Jamuria near Asansol, and the land is being acquired. The Jindal plant is coming up in Salboni in West Midnapore and land has been acquired using a pathbreaking compensation formula.
Dhoot said Videocon would get its coal from an Indonesian company and the proposed deep-sea port would be important.
Biswadip Gupta, joint managing director of JSW Steel, said that although West Bengal has attracted a total investment of nearly Rs 100,000 crore in steel projects over the last one year and proposals still coming in, there are no parameters that spell out the relation between a project capacity and land requirement.
He said technology has changed vastly from the days when a plant like Bokaro Steel of the government-owned Steel Authority of India Ltd had to acquire 25,700 acres to build a 5m tonne plant.
Gupta hinted that Jindal’s formula of 4500 acres for a 10m tonne project be taken as the benchmark.