India's state-run steelmaker Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) will resume work within the next two months on development of the 500 million mt Rowghat iron ore reserves in the central Indian province of Chattisgarh, company officials said on Monday, June 25. Work had been halted last year amid protests against alleged exploitation of natural resources.
SAIL had planned development of the reserves to extract 14 million mt of ore per year with completion scheduled for 2015. Officials said that a new timeline for the launch of ore production is yet to be announced.
The development of the Rowghat iron ore reserves was part of SAIL's strategic plans to increase its iron ore production from captive mines with an investment of $2.5 billion, contributing to hot metal production of 26 million mt per year by 2015. The project will be implemented in two phases; the first 7 million mt of additional annual capacity is expected to be completed by 2015 and the second 7 million mt will increase the company's total captive annual resource supply to 36 million mt.
The commencement of production from the Rowghat reserves is also important to establish a raw material linkage to SAIL's Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP), also located in Chattisgarh province, where production is being expanded to 6 million mt per year from the current capacity of 3.7 million mt per year. The plant currently has iron ore linkage with the company's captive mine at Dalli-Rajhara which supplies 9 million mt of ore per year but reserves in these mines are fast depleting and according to the company will last another six years.