Saturday, September 18,
Essar Steel has achieved financial closure for its $1 billion project for open-cast Iron ore mining and construction of pit-head beneficiation and a six-million MT pellet plant at the West end of the Mesabi iron range in north-east Minnesota in the US.
Scheduled to be operational by August 2012, the Minnesota project (Essar Steel Minnesota LLC) will supply feedstock to the group’s 4 MT steel plant at Algoma, across Lake Superior in Ontario, Canada.
Essar Steel Minnesota LLC has access to Iron ore resources of over 1.4 billion tonnes. In the future, Essar plans to add a 2.5 MT sponge-iron making facility (DRI Plant) and slab caster at Minnesota.
Talking about the group’s Indian operations, Mr Mukherjee, CEO of the Essar Steel Business Group said the 6 MT pellet plant at Paradip in Orissa would be operational this month. The Rs 2,200-crore project includes an 8 MT ore beneficiation plant at Joda in Barbil in Orissa and a 250-km slurry pipeline from Joda to Paradip.
The pellets produced at Paradip would be transported by sea to Essar’s steel making capacity at Hazira in Gujarat, which is undergoing a capacity expansion to 9.6 MT from 4.6 MT.
Leave a Reply