India’s KIOCL Limited (formerly Kudremukh Iron Ore Company Limited) has submitted an offer to construct an iron ore pelletization plant with an annual capacity of 1.5 million mt as well as a beneficiation plant for the Bokaro steel mill of stated-owned steelmaker Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL), a KIOCL official said on Wednesday, September 9.
KIOCL has proposed construction of the plant on “build-own-operate” (BOO) basis and will seek a technical partner to implement the project, the official said.
“KIOCL is planning to construct similar projects for steel mills as per the Ministry of Steel’s efforts to preserve high grade ore by increasing utilization of low grade iron ore fines available across all mine heads in the country,” KIOCL chairman and managing director Malay Chatterjee said.
At the same time, the government of the southern Indian province of Karnataka has allotted iron ore reserves across 473 hectares in the Sandur-Balari region to KIOCL, which for the last 10 years had been scouting for captive iron ore reserves.