Facing iron ore crunch for the first time in its over 100 years of history, Tata Steel is now operating its 9.7 million tonnes per annum facility in Jamshedpur with raw material bought from domestic sources besides imports.
The company, which has bought 2.3 million tonnes iron ore to run its lone steel-making facility in the country, said the quantum of buying would go up if its closed mines do not start production. "For the first time in our history, we are running our plant with bought out iron ore as all our mines are closed. There are issues with both Jharkhand and Odisha. We have court cases going on in both Ranchi and Cuttack High Courts," said Tata Steel Managing Director T V Narendran t
He said the company has bought iron ore from state-run NMDC besides importing the key steel making raw material from Australia. While it has bought around 0.8 million tonnes from NMDC, the remaining is imports from Australia. "We are buying iron ore on a daily basis. If the mines start, we will stop buying," he said when asked how much the company could end up buying the raw material in the current fiscal.
One of the first steel units in the country, the Jamshedpur facility of Tata Steel was founded in 1907 and the plant has been running on captive source of iron ore. Apart from Tata Steel, state-run steelmaker Steel Authority of India enjoys the benefit of having captive iron ore sources.