Essar Steel Holdings, a subsidiary of India's Essar Group, is to invest Rupees 177.600 billion ($3.678 billion) in the establishment of a steel plant with 6 million mt annual capacity in Karnataka. The plant will help the company to raise its annual production capacity to 25 million.
The investment proposal has been cleared by the Karnataka government, while the company has asked the state government to lease an iron ore mine to ensure uninterrupted supply of the raw material.
The proposal in question involves the setting up of a pellet plant, a coke oven plant and a battery in the first phase. Accordingly, the plant would initially have a 3 million mt annual capacity which would be doubled to 6 million mt in the second phase.