Mumbai: JSW Steel Ltd, an integrated steel manufacturer with a capacity of 4 million tonnes per annum, is in talks with Australian and Canadian firms for strategic stakes in coking coal mines there.
Sajjan Jindal, vice chairman and managing director, JSW Steel Ltd, said: “The size of the mines is close to half a billion tonne of coal reserves each in Australia and Canada,” he said.
He did not name the companies “as they are listed” in their respective countries and “talks are at a premature stage”.
Jindal, while talking after announcing the third quarter results of the company, said JSW Steel is looking for three mines in Australia and one mine in Canada. “Out of the three mines, one mine is currently operational and the other two are greenfield,” he said.
The Canadian mine is completely operational and JSW Steel is looking at picking up minority stake in it, he said. He, however, did not disclose the amount that will be invested in these mines.
The company currently owns stakes in some coking coal (a major raw material for manufacturing steel) and thermal coal mines in Mozambique too and will start importing coal from there by the end of the calendar year 2008, said Jindal.
“We are currently 100% dependent on coal purchases and want to reduce the dependability,” he said. JSW meets half of the requirement of iron ore, the most important raw material for manufacture of steel, through captive resources, buying the rest.
With the iron ore supply from Chilean mines starting from early 2009, JSW is looking at reducing its dependence on the commodity by another 25% by 2009, Jindal said.
Hit by rising cost of raw materials of both iron ore and coking coal, the third quarter net profit (profit after tax) of JSW Steel shrunk by 9.3% at Rs 328.18 crore as against Rs 362.15 crore in the corresponding quarter last year on a 11.87% growth in sales at Rs 2,563.08 crore compared with Rs 2,291 crore.
Sheshagiri Rao, director-finance, JSW Steel, said crude steel production rose by 15% for the quarter to 8.41 lakh tonne.
Source :
Dna
