KIOCL Ltd (formerly Kudremukh Iron Ore Company Ltd) is poised to get an iron ore asset in Andhra Pradesh.

Malay Chatterjee, CMD of KIOCL told Business Line from Hyderabad on Thursday that an MoU for a mining joint venture with Andhra Pradesh Mineral Development Corporation (APMDC) for an iron-ore bearing asset in Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh was formalised.

He said the central public sector unit would have 49 per cent stake in the mining joint venture, while APMDC will have a 51 per cent holding.

“A 2.4-million-tonne-a-year ore beneficiation plant and a pellet plant at a cost of Rs 1,000 crore will be set up by KIOCL independently in Anantapur utilising the ore produced by the joint venture,” Chatterjee added.

The formal approval from the Andhra Pradesh Government for the initial agreement made way for the mining as well as the value-added projects.

“We will now work for the final agreement and initiate the process for project-related nods and clearances”, said the KIOCL CMD.

KIOCL had closed its 22.5-million-tonne Kudremukh mine on January 1, 2006 after the Supreme Court ordered miners to shut shop in the environmentally sensitive Karnataka’s Western Ghats region. Since then it did not have a mine, but ran its 3.5-million-tonne pellet plant in Mangalore using iron-ore fines from NMDC’s mine in Chhattisgarh.

Since July 2012, when Malay Chatterjee took over as the CMD of KIOCL, he had been pursuing the company’s pending applications for 28 mine leases and eight prospecting licences.

jayanta.mallick@thehindu.co.in

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