The Hindu Business Line : RINL keen to acquire Bird Group

New Delhi, Nov. 30 Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd (RINL), the holding company of Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, has evinced interest to acquire the entire Bird Group of Companies, including Orissa Mining Development Corporation, to secure iron ore supplies for meeting its long-term needs.

“We have proposed to take over the entire Bird Group of Companies, including the OMDC, which has iron ore reserves of 110 million tonnes to meet our growing production needs,” Mr P.K. Bishnoi, Chairman and Managing Director, said here.

He also said that the company’s bottom-line was taking a severe hit as it was forced to procure ore from the market at very high prices.

“Our profits could have been higher by about Rs 1,000 crore, if we had captive mines. Companies like Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) and Tata Steel are much more comfortable and better off in this connection,” he added.

Panel’s concern

A Parliamentary Consultative Committee had also expressed concerns about the need to ensure availability of critical raw material such as iron ore and coking coal to cater to both the present as well as post-expansion requirements of public sector steel units.

“Together SAIL and RINL are implementing their expansion plans worth more than Rs 60,000 crore and so obviously the iron ore requirement will shoot up accordingly. At one point of time, we were even mulling to import a shipload of iron ore from Brazil on an experimental basis, but it somehow did not work out,” Mr Bishnoi said.

Expansion plan

The company’s current expansion plan involves a capital outlay of Rs 8,692 crore to raise its production capacity from 3.4 million tonnes to 6.3 million tonnes.

“The overall plan of the company is to reach a production level of 8.5 million tonnes by 2012 and to 12.5 million tonnes by 2014-15,” he added.

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