The government of the eastern Indian state of Odisha has decided that even steel mills with captive iron ore mines could seek long-term iron ore supply agreements with the state-owned miner Odisha Mining Corporation Limited (OMC), a state government official said on Tuesday, August 9.
The official said that local steel mills facing shortages in production from their captive mines could seek supply agreements with OMC, but only for the volumes of which they are short.
One of the main beneficiaries of the raw material linkage offer from OMC will be Tata Steel which operates a steel mill at Kalinganagar in Odisha. While Tata Steel has its own captive iron ore mines linked to its steel mill at Jamshedpur in Jharkhand state, the Kalinganagar plant does not have any dedicated raw material linkage.
One of the reasons for offering a supply linkage to steel mills with captive iron ore mines is that OMC does not find exports of the raw material viable at the existing 30 percent export duty, the official added.