Upon the Indian Supreme Court's decision to allow domestic state-run miner NMDC to resume mining in the Bellary district of India's Karnataka state and sell its output within certain conditions, Indian steelmaker JSW Steel has stated that this decision was a relief to the company as they were facing a possible shutdown at their Vijayanagar plant due to iron ore shortage.
The company plans to operate its Vijayanagar plant in Karnataka and its Salem plant in Tamil Nadu at around 80 percent of the designed capacity of 11 million mt per year. Indicating that their agreement with NMDC is for 8 million mt of iron ore per year, JSW Steel expects to receive 6-7 million mt iron ore this year from NMDC, in proportion to their capacity utilization.