A comprehensive National Policy for Iron Ore is the call of the day which will ensure sustainable and scientific mining with improved technology, said Shri Rana Som, CMD, National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) in an interactive meeting with the Merchants’ Chamber of Commerce today. The modern scientific mining could not be ensured as the State Governments are giving innumerable number of mining leases of very small sizes which do not permit for modern mining.
NMDC is building up one integrated Steel Plant of 3 mlt capacity and another of 2 mlt capacity and proposed to bring the latest technology from Korea or Japan . It is also building two Pellets Plants with one million & 1.2 million tones capacity to utilise the Iron Ore fines. The company is also setting up beneficiation plants to utilise banded Hematite jasper (BHJ) and banded hematite quartzite (BHQ) rocks, which are naturally mined along with the ore during normal mining operations The technology has been developed through in-house R&D..
NMDC proposed to produce 51 mlt by 2014-15 and it plans to expanded horizontally to develop mining in Coal, Phosphate besides Iron Ore , in addition to setting up of Steel and Pellet Plants.
NMDC is the only PSU which spend 5% of its profit on CSR activities against the normal rate of 2% by other companies. It is also building up (430 Km long) pipeline to evacuate its Iron Ore slurries. MECON has been entrusted to finalise the report and the entire project is scheduled to be completed by end of 2012. In order to have a better supervision the entire pipeline will be constructed on the side of the state and National Highways. The ESSAR pipeline put up to evacuate Iron Ore Fines from a Bailadila to Vizag was recently blasted by the Maoists at several places. On the pricing of raw material, Shri Som explained that earlier price contracts have ended in March 2010 and new contracts have been finalised independent of International prices. The prices to be charged from long –term customers would now be determined by deducting from the FOB value of exports, the expected Railway freight and royalty. It will offer a fixed discount of 5% over and above the pithead price. In order to protect the domestic customers from the volatility of international market, NMDC will increase prices to the extent of 2/3 rd increase in International market. To insulate the customers from the exchange variation the exchange rate of Re/ US$ has been kept at 01 April 2010. It is also putting up a Iron Nugget Plant which will produce with Iron content of 96% that can be directly charged to the furnace. These are being developed with Kobe Steel of Japan with 5 lac tones capacity which is likely to be expanded to 1 mlt in future. On the issue of land acquisition, for mining Shri Som said that NMDC has acquired recently 756 acres of land and paid 9.5 lacs per acre for barren land and 12 to 13 lacs per acre for agricultural land. He proposed to employ 11,807 local people , most of whom being affected due to acquisition.
Shri S.S.Beriwala, President, MCC insisted on drafting of a National Policy of Iron Ore to cater to the small and medium Steel Producers particularly for States like West Bengal, which are not having any Iron Ore base within the State and requested NMDC to developed Pellet plants of 2 to 6 lacs of tons capacity so that Iron Ore fines can be utilized effectively the SMEs.
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