Tata Steel to produce 40 mln tpa by 2011-12 at Rs 60,000 cr

New Delhi, Oct 20 (UNI) Leveraging its recent 7.6 billion dollar deal with UK-based Corus, Tata Steel today announced its plans to expand its overall tonnage to 40 million tonnes by 2011-2012, by enhancing the existing capacity at its plants in Jamshedpur and setting up three greenfield projects in Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh.

''The capacity at the Jamshedpur unit will be enhanced to 10 million tonnes per annum by 2010 in two phases. The first phase of expansion by another 1.8 million tonnes at an investment of Rs 4,500 crore is underway and would be completed by August 2008. The current capacity of the plant is five million tonnes per annum,'' Tata Steel MD B Muthuraman told reporters here today.

While orders for equipment have been placed for the greenfield Orissa project, expected to be operational by the third quarter of 2009 with an initial capacity of three million tonnes, the Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh facilities are still at the preliminary stages of land acquisitions.

The first phase of the Jharkhand plant with a 12 million tonnes per annum capacity, to be built at a cost of Rs 40,000 crore, will be complete in two years time, while the construction work of the six million tonnes capacity Orissa plant involving an investment of Rs 15,400 crore is slated to start shortly.

The first phase of the Chhattisgarh steel unit with a capacity of five million tonnes per annum is likely to be setup within a time frame of 4-5 years.

Moreover, the capacity of the gas-based steel plant coming up in Iran will also be scaled up to five million tonnes per annum from the initial three million tonnes per annum capacity, and will be converted into a wholly export oriented unit.

UNI DKS/CS RA BD1834