India's state-run miner National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) will sign a 50%-50% joint venture agreement with the Russian steelmaker Severstal by December to establish a steel plant that would cost 150 billion rupees ($3.1 billion), according to media reports.
Chairman of NMDC Rana Som said that NMDC is seeking to increase the capacity of the proposed joint-venture mill, in southern India's Karnataka state, to 3 million mt per year from the initially planned capacity of 2 million mt.
As SteelOrbis previously reported, Severstal and NMDC signed a memorandum of understanding to establish a joint venture company to build an integrated steel plant in Karnataka with a capacity between two and five million mt per year in December 2010.