Tata Steel explores commercial mining plan

Tata Steel is weighing up a move into merchant mining to harness its expertise in iron-ore and coal mining. 

Responding to questions from shareholders at the annual meeting of one of Tata Steel’s subsidiaries in Calcutta, Executive Director & CFO Koushik Chatterjee, said: “It’s important for us to look at mining as an area. This is what we are evaluating just now to see how we can get into mining as a business and focusing on India.”

He added that Tata Steel would float a separate company to carry out any planned merchant mining activity in India. No mention was made of any similar activity overseas. The planned segue into commercial mining makes up a key part of the company’s efforts to streamline its operations across four verticals: steel production, downstream value additions, utilities and mining infrastructure.

Chatterjee added that there would be a “big focus” in downstream in one year and that Tata Steel was evaluating several iron-ore mines in Odisha that were due to be put up for auction with current leases due to expire in spring 2020.

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Tata Steel has production capacity in the region of 33 million tonnes and is India’s second largest iron-ore miner after the State-run NMDC. It has previously revealed production totals from its captive mines for 2018/19 were 23.3-million tons of iron-ore and 6.54-million tons of coal. The steel giant is almost self-reliant in iron ore providing raw material security. Elsewhere, its coal production delivers 27% of the amount needed for its steel mill blast furnaces.

Usha Martin, acquired by Tata Sponge, will be renamed Tata Steel Long Products and is being tipped as a vehicle for growth in long products.