India-based Essar Group has announced that earlier this month it has raised $450 million from a clutch of New York-based funds to complete construction of its $1.8 billion Minnesota iron ore mine and pellet plant.
According to Essar Minnesota CEO Madhu Vuppuluri, the company will be one of the "lowest-cost producers" of pellets in the world. Essar Minnesota will only have two customers. It will supply about 4 million mt of taconite pellets per year to Arcelor Mittal and about 3 million mt to Algoma, an Essar Group company based in Canada.
With the funding complete, the company will ramp up the iron ore pellet capacity. Once it reaches full capacity in 2015, the plant will produce 7 million mt of iron ore pellets per year.