RNRL plans Rs 40k cr Jharkhand steel unit
Promit Mukherjee
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
MUMBAI: Reliance Natural Resources Ltd (RNRL), a Reliance-Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (R-ADAG) group company, will spearhead the group's three new ventures of steel manufacturing, cement and shipping.
While RNRL will have the ownership of the three arms, the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) work will be carried by group flagship Reliance Infrastructure, said Lalit Jalan, wholetime director, on the sidelines of the company's annual general meeting here.
The company, which recently entered into steel EPC business through a joint venture agreement with Chinese steel giant China Metallurgical Group Corporation to execute steel projects in India, plans to set up a 12 million tonne steel plant in Jharkhand, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
A Jharkhand official said Reliance Infra will invest up to Rs 40,000 crore. "We have received the proposal from Anil Ambani Group. It is still under process," K K Khandelwal, industry secretary, Jharkhand, told Reuters.
Addressing shareholders, Anil Ambani, chairman, said the company is also looking at the nuclear sector but will not enter it as a power generator.
"Once the policy framework is clear on the nuclear issue, the company will naturally participate in the sector as an EPC contractor," he said.
Ambani said all the company's existing and future infrastructure businesses will be pursued by Reliance Infraventures, a wholly owned division..
Ambani said the company is developing five four-lane highway projects in Tamil Nadu aggregating to a total length of over 400 kilometres with a total cost of Rs 3,150 crore.
"All our road projects have achieved financial closure and at least two of them will open to traffic by the end of this year," he said.
Apart from these, the company is also pursuing projects in Punjab for the National Highway Authority of India and in Delhi.
Reliance Infrastructure has pre-qualified for projects worth Rs 21,000 crore in the road sector, he said. But it will not go for external funding.
Ambani said the company is working on employee stock option plan and within this year the company will come up with a comprehensive employee stock options.
It will also increase the number of its employees from 30,000 currently to 50,000 in the next three to five years.
The company's metro rail line 1 project for Mumbai is running ahead of schedule and will be operational by September 2010. It is also pursuing the line 2 of the metro project, said Ambani.
The company announced a 63% dividend on the eve of the AGM.