Indian state-owned steelmaker Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) will develop the minor iron ore reserve of Dulki to ensure interim raw material supplies to its Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP), a company official said on Tuesday, February 28.
The official said that the reserves of the Dulki mine are very small and will be just sufficient to feed BSP, located in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, for just about a year and half.
However, the development of the minor iron ore reserve has become imperative and BSP’s existing linked Dalli Rajhara iron ore mine, also located at Chhattisgarh, is fast depleting, he said.
At the same time, development of Rowghat mine with an estimated reserve of 511 million mt and which is to be linked to BSP is running behind schedule and will not commence production before another two years. Because of this, development of the minor Dulki mine is important to maintain raw material supplies to BSP in the interim years, the official added.
BSP produces 4.3 million mt per year of hot metal and plans to ramp this up to 7.5 million mt per year based on raw material supplies once the Rowghat mine is made operational.