- Company plans to expand capacity to 10 mnt/year in 5-7 years
- ACME to supply Vietnamese company 0.8 mnt/year for 10 years
ACME Group, a renewable energy equipment manufacturer in India, is set to establish a 1.2 million tonnes (mnt/year) greenfield plant for manufacturing green hot briquetted iron (HBI) and direct reduced iron (DRI). This marks the first phase of the project, and there are plans to expand the capacity to 10 mnt of DRI in the next 5-7 years, CEO Manoj Kumar Upadhyay informed The Economic Times.
The company will invest INR 5,00 crore in the first phase and is in the process of receiving regulatory clearances from respective authorities. Green hydrogen is expected to be supplied from by ACME, while pellets will be procured locally or from Brazil. The company is building green hydrogen facilities in Odisha and Oman.
Notably, ACME has already secured an 10-year offtake deal for 0.8 mnt/year with Stavian Industrial Metal, a Vietnamese company specialising in industrial production, technology, and trading. The two companies have formalised a binding term sheet for a take-or-pay/supply-or-pay sale agreement for green HBI/DRI.
Additionally, ACME is in talks with steel majors in Europe and other regions for sale of the remaining 0.4 mnt/year, with hopes to finalise agreements within the next 4-6 months.
The announcements comes amid increasing uncertainty regarding the future of Indian steel exports to the EU, a major buyer. The imminent implementation of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) is expected to create additional tax burdens for Indian steelmakers. Notably, on average, India’s industry average emissions factor for the steel industry is 2.5 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per tonne of finished steel (tCO2e/tfs), much higher than the global average.
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