Production and dispatch of iron ore have come to a halt for over a week from the Balda block mines in Odisha’s Keonjhar district held by Serajuddin & Company Ltd. Notably Serajuddin mines is the second largest merchant miner in the state after Rungta mines, with an annual production of about 9 to 10 million tonnes.
Serajuddin’s mine figures among the 152 iron and manganese ore miners in Odisha who have been slapped with demand notices by the state government for raising ore beyond the approved limits of environment clearance. The demand notices were served to the mining companies after a recent Supreme Court order in a case filed by NGO Common Cause over rampant illegal mining in Odisha, in glaring violation of statutory norms.
According to sources the lease deed of the mine is due to expire by September end. Since the lease deed has not been automatically renewed, the iron ore mine runs the risk of an imminent shutdown.
Officials at Serajuddin & Company were not immediately available to offer a comment.
The Balda block iron ore mines of Serajuddin & Co, is operating a mining lease over an extent of 335.594 hectares for iron ore in Balda, Kalimati and Nayagarh under Bamebari of Keonjhar district. The mine has been in operations since 1962 for iron ore to cater to the raw material in indigenous iron & steel industries as well as for exports.
Serajuddin Mines play a significant role as a raw material supplier with an iron ore production of 7.4 MnT between Jan to Jul’17. According the data mentioned with SteelMint in CY16 the miner had produced 9.89 MnT iron ore.
When SteelMint received last information from the source about the said miner it was still uncertain that how long will the operations resume.
As the festival holidays have already begun in the region it will remain unclear until the first week of October when the workforce is back in the field.
Looking at the turn of the events after the Supreme Court decision few weeks ago, the market participants are in state of tandem with the situation prompting such high volume of supply from Serajuddin may suddenly be unavailable from the market.
The question remains will this situation put pressure on supply increasing prices the near future?
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