South Korean steelmaker POSCO is planning to invest $12 billion in constructing a greenfield steel mill in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, the Indian Chamber of Commerce (ICC) said on Tuesday, April 20, quoting South Korean Ambassador to India, Shin Bongkil.
The ICC statement followed an industrial round table conference on India and South Korea in presence of the ambassador.
The ICC statement quoting Ambassador Shin Bongkil said that POSCO is planning the largest-ever foreign direct investment (FDI) in India, committing an investment of $12 billion to construct such a greenfield steel mill in Odisha.
The latest POSCO plans for a greenfield steel mill project comes after several failed bids previously. In 2005, POSCO had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the government of Odisha to construct a 12 million mt per year steel mill at the port town of Paradip in the state, but the project was abandoned in 2012 after the government failed to hand over the required land to the company.
POSCO had also signed a MoU with the government of the southern Indian state of Karnataka to set up a steel mill project with a capacity of 6 million mt per year in the state, but this too was subsequently abandoned.
More recently, POSCO and state-run steel producer Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL) at the behest of the Indian government had set up a working group to explore the setting up of a greenfield project for the production of high value-added flat steel on surplus land held by RINL.
However, this too lapsed into a limbo with the Indian government approving a 100 percent disinvestment of its stake in RINL to private investors and with POSCO reportedly scouting for a new partner for a steel mill project in the country.
At present, the South Korean company operates POSCO Maharashtra Steel Limited, a re-rolling mill in the west of the country for the production of high-value flat steel products.