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Mittal to build two plants in India

Global magnate Lakshmi Mittal is looking to build two steel plants in India for about US$18 billion, which would be the largest ever foreign investment in the country, reports said yesterday.

The investment by ArcelorMittal would eclipse the US$12 billion steel plant South Korean rival POSCO plans to build in eastern Orissa state, the newspaper reports said.

The plans were announced after a meeting yesterday between Mittal and Indian Steel Minister Ram Vilas Paswan in New Dehli, the Press Trust of India said.

However, Mittal was quoted as saying after the meeting that "we have to have raw material linkages, land and other things in place" for the projects to go ahead.

Last December, ArcelorMittal, the world's biggest steelmaker, signed an US$8.7 billion project with the Orissa government to build a 12 tonne capacity steel plant in the resource-rich eastern state.

Now, ArcelorMittal, which has no manufacturing facilities in India, says it will also build a plant in eastern Jharkhand state, the reports said.

The two plants would have combined capacity of 24 million tonnes, the Press Trust of India said.

Executives from ArcelorMittal have been in touch with state officials in Orissa and Jharkhand over the past year, said the Mint business daily.

ArcelorMittal, which controls 10 percent of global steel production, has asked the government to speed up allocation of captive mines for its projects.

Mittal's plans highlights the race among global steel giants to secure the supply of key materials, such as iron ore, to feed a growing world economy.

India's Tata Steel Ltd, which earlier this year bought British steelmaker Corus, is also expanding operations domestically, and plans to increase its domestic production to about 20 million tonnes by 2015.

Paswan said the governments of Orissa and Jharkhand should expedite allocation of mining leases and assured Mittal his ministry would do all it could.

"The matter is now being dealt at the highest level," Paswan said, adding Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was involved.

Promising a level-playing field in the country, Paswan said of the 200 million tonnes of steel production targeted by 2020, only one-third would be produced by public sector steel firms and the rest by private manufacturers.

India currently produces about 35 million tonnes of steel a year.

Orissa, which has a quarter of India's iron ore reserves, has witnessed a rush by Indian and international players to invest in large steel plants there. But the road for some has been bumpy, with POSCO's huge project dogged by farmers' protests. POSCO now aims to complete the plant by 2016.
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