By Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, January 14, 2019: Odisha continues to be the most favoured destination for steel plant with the Indian government owned Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) proposing to set up three million tonnes per annum (mtpa) steel plant on coastal Odisha with an estimated investment of Rs 15,000 crore.

The plant, if comes up will be SAIL’s second in the state after its Rourkela unit, which has a hot metal capacity at 4.5 mtpa. Official sources confirmed having received a letter from SAIL in this regard.

“The SAIL has sought about 3000 acres of land to put up the plant. The investment may be around Rs 15000 crore”, said the sources added.

The location of the plant is still not decided but SAIL is looking for a coast based state-of-art steel plant to optimize costs, streamline operations and ramp up its bottom line.

SAIL has been exploring options for locating a joint venture (JV) steel plant with ArcelorMittal in Odisha. It has been scouting for a suitable location for the project.

ArcelorMittal and SAIL entered into memorandum of understanding (MoU) in May 2015 to explore the possibility of setting up a 1.5 mtpa auto grade steel manufacturing facility top begin with at an estimated cost of Rs 15000 crore. With provision for expansion to 2.5 mtpa.

In May last year, SAIL had written to Odisha’s industries secretary Sanjeev Chopra, evincing interest to locate the auto grade steel facility in the state.

“The decision of site selection for the proposed unit would be taken based on the advice of relevant experts, and after conducting due diligence taking into account the location, availability of manufacturing inputs, infrastructure and facilities as well as incentives and benefits made available by the respective state government. We appreciate your proposition and would keep Odisha as a prospective site to be considered for the proposed unit”, the letter from SAIL stated then.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2015 had dedicated the expansion of Rourkela steel plant from 1 mtpa to 4.5 mtpa at an investment of Rs 12,000 crore. Now the PSU has announced plans to invest Rs 41,000 crore more on the Rourkela unit to scale up capacity to 10 mtpa.