India’s iron ore miner, NMDC Limited is seeking a contractor for operation and maintenance of its under construction 3 million mt per year steel mills in central Indian province of Chhattisgarh, a company official said on Thursday, July 19.
Commenting on the first ever instance in the domestic steel industry of contractor operating and maintaining a steel mill, the official said that state owned NMDC Limited, in response to an Expression of Interest, received ten bids from prospective contractors to operate the steel project scheduled to go into trial run by end-2018.
He said that the appointment of a contractor for operations and maintenance for an initial period of three years is aimed to gain technical and managerial expertise of running the steel mill during its period of stabilization of production.
According to an official in the Ministry of Steel, NMDC being primarily an iron ore miner, needs external support in operating and running a steel mill but officials in domestic steel companies pointed out that all existing and future steel mill projects currently under various stages of implementation are operated and maintained by companies that invested in these plants, and third party contractors for running a plant is never heard off in the industry.