The modalities of the joint venture between Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) and South Korean firm Posco are likely to be finalised by the end of this month, Steel Secretary, Mr P.K. Misra, said on Wednesday.
The Steel Secretary was speaking on the sidelines of the inaugural session of a ‘Steel Seminar on FINEX Technical Application', organised by FICCI and Posco.
“We are working on it. We will be able to decide by the end of this month,” Mr Misra said.
SAIL and Posco had proposed a Rs 17,000-crore joint venture to set up a steel plant at Bokaro in Jharkhand. Negotiations for the same have been going on for more than a year now.
The joint venture proposes to use Posco's patented finex technology for steel-making. If this happens, it would be the first outside Korea. Finex is an environment-friendly process where iron ore fines and non-coking coal are directly used, bringing down operational costs.
“It combines the advantage of being less land intensive than the traditional blast furnace, and at the same time offering economies in capital as well as operating cost by using iron ore fines directly,” Mr Misra said.
The Secretary estimated the growth in domestic steel consumption at around 8 per cent for the current fiscal. He admitted that land availability for mega green-field projects will continue to nag promoters till a “widely acceptable policy for Rehabilitation and Resettlement (R&R) that has the acceptance of the States emerges.”