Tata Metaliks to expand Kharagpur plant, seeks 350 acres of land

Kolkata, Jan 12; Tata Metaliks will be increasing capacity at Kharagpur and has sought 350 acres of land for its diversification project adjacent to the existing plant.

Speaking to mediapersons on the sidelines of a workshop, Tata Steel Deputy Director T Mukherjee said here today that two-third of the land had already been acquired near its existing plant and the rest would be done soon.

Admitting that land acquisition was a "difficult" problem, he said the acquisition process is on and the company is reworking on the investment plans of the project as it had been delayed for nearly two years.

Tata Metaliks, one of the largest foundry grade pig iron manufacturers in the world, has re-aligned and enhanced the capacity of one its blast furnaces at its Kharagpur facilities, at a cost of Rs 17 crore.

As a result, the capacity of this blast furnace would rise by approximately 22,000 tonne of hot metal.

The Kharagpur plant's total capacity was 325,000 tonne at the end of FY06, while its total capacity, including Redi facilities (Maharashtra), was 425,000 tonne.

It does appear that this expansion is aimed at leveraging strong demand conditions from the automobile and engineering sectors.

In the September 2006 quarter, the company's performance was adversely affected due to lower production from one of its furnaces.

West Bengal had seen a slew of investments from the Tata group over the past few months. The group has almost doubled its investment in the Haldia coke and power project to Rs 1,650 crore, to be undertaken by Tata Power and Hooghly Met Coke&Power Co, promoted by Tata Steel.

A steel plant would also be set up in Singur by Tata Ryerson apart from its small car project in Singur.

UNI