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Posco and Orissa sign deal: Biggest FDI ever at Rs.52,800 crore
Mumbai/ New Delhi: Korean steel giant Posco Steel, the world's fifth-largest steel maker, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Orissa government to invest $12 billion (Rs52,800 crore) in the state.

In four phases the steel major will set up India's largest steel project, a 12-million-tonne plant in Paradip.

Under the agreement, $3 billion will be invested initially between 2007 and 2010 to build a 3-million-tonne plant, which will start production from 2010, Posco said in a statement. Then, 3 million tonnes will be added every two years, taking it to 12 million tonnes by 2016.

The project also involves accessing a 30-million-tonne iron ore mine, a mill for making hot-rolled coil and a sea-port. It is estimated to generate 48,000 jobs. The government of Orissa also granted Posco mining lease rights for 30 years to supply a total of 600 million tonnes of iron ore to the new plant.

The MoU was signed in the presence of Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, Korean Ambassador to India Jung Il Choi, commercial attache in the South Korean embassy Byeong Cheol Lee, and Posco's Chairman Ku-Taek Lee. Posco's executive vice-president Soung Sik Cho and Orissa's principal secretary in the steel and mines department, Bhaskar Chatterjee signed the agreement.
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Orissa clarifies terms for iron ore export
Bhubaneswar: The Orissa Government has clarified that POSCO will be provided 600 million tonnes of iron ore for captive use in its proposed integrated steel plant at Paradip for a period of 30 years.
The company, however, will be allowed to export iron ore against import of equivalent quantity of ore from outside.

"No ore will be permitted to be used for pure trading within the country or by way of export. The company will have to achieve a number of detailed milestones before recommendation is made for prospecting licence in the first instance and the mining lease subsequently," the State Chief Secretary, Dr Subas Pani, said at the MoU signing ceremony.

However, Dr Pani said that in case the company needs to import iron ore of low alumina content, it will be permitted to export equivalent quantity of high alumina content ore to its Korean plants, subject to a ceiling of 30 per cent of ore consumed by their plant at Paradip in a given year.

"Any export of iron ore by way of swap will be allowed only after an equivalent quantity of ore has been imported for the plant in the first place," Dr Pani said, while adding that there will be no net outgo of iron ore from Orissa without value addition and the concept of net nil export will be adopted.
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Tata Steel is best steel company in the world
New Delhi: Tata Steel has been declared the best steel company in the world in a ranking released in New York by the World Steel Dynamics, a leading steel information service provider.

Based on a set of 20 criteria, ranging from cash operating costs to stock market performance of the last three years, World Steel Dynamics ranked Tata Steel as the numero uno among 23 world-class steel makers.

South Korean giant Posco, which is gearing up to set up a plant in Orissa, was ranked second, followed by Russian giant Severstal.
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Gujarat NRE Coke acquires stake in Australian mining company
Calcutta: Gujarat NRE Coke has acquired a 30 per cent stake in Zinico Resource NL, an Australian mining company having exploration licences for iron ore and other base metals.The acquisition makes India's largest metallurgical coke producer the single largest shareholder in the Australian mining company.

Zinico will soon be listed on the Australian Stock Exchange and after that Gujarat NRE vice chairman and managing director, Arun Kumar Jagatramka, will join the Zinico board.

The development gains significance as it makes Gujarat NRE Coke as the first Indian company to acquire any iron ore mines abroad, ahead of integrated steel makers such as Tata Steel or Steel Authority of India (SAIL), which are also contemplating equity participation in iron ore mines abroad to source the ore for their captive use.

Zinico Resources has secured a portfolio of prospective iron ore and base metals projects, which are located in close proximity to existing world-class mining projects in Tasmania.

Jagatramka said Zinico's 'exceptional' asset portfolio provided an ideal opportunity for Gujarat NRE to gain further exposure to the minerals industry in Australia.

It can be recalled that the Indian company has also acquired a colliery in New South Wales in Australia. The production will start from July 15.
Apart from iron ore, Zinico will also give Gujarat NRE access to base metals like nickel and zinc. It would take about six months to one year to develop these mines, said Jagatramka. The total investment is estimated over Australian $100 million. However, the Indian company could not provide any estimate of reserve of iron ore as of now.
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Tata Steel looking at acquisitions abroad
Mumbai: Tata Steel is looking at acquiring some more steel companies in South-East Asia and China, the company's managing director B Muthuraman has been reported as saying.

Muthuraman has quoted as saying that discussions are on with some of the companies and a final decision will be taken soon. He did not identify the companies. Tata Steel had earlier this year completed acquisition of Singapore's Natsteel.

Muthuraman said Tata Steel is planning to invest up to Rs250 bn over the next five years with the aim of attaining annual capacity of 15mn tonnes. He said a significant amount of funds for the planned new investments will come from internal resources and that there is no immediate plan to go to the market to borrow funds.

Tata Steel has acquired land both in Orissa and Chhattisgarh to set up steel plants in those states and will be applying for taking mines on lease.

Currently, the company produces five mn tonnes of steel at Jamshedpur and it would be adding another two mn tonnes for which the company is planning to place orders for the machinery next month, Muthuraman said.
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Moody's: Reliance ratings review to be held in abeyance
London: Moody's Investor Service has announced that it would continue to review the 'Ba2' ratings of Reliance Industries Ltd for possible up-gradation, pending developments related to corporate restructuring and possible financial settlement.

The developments were expected following the settlement of an ownership dispute in Reliance group between brothers Mukesh Ambani and Anil Ambani.

In a statement, Moody's said the resolution of the family ownership issue was a key development, but its potential financial impact was uncertain.

"RIL's fundamental operational and financial profile is strong for its current rating and the rating review for upgrade will await further details on the potential restructuring before concluding," the rating agency said.

The Mumbai-based Reliance Industries Limited is a leading domestic petrochemicals producer and refiner.
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Satyam bags ERP deal from B&L India
Hyderabad: Satyam Computer Services Limited, a global consulting and IT services provider, has been selected as the integrated enterprise solution implementation partner by Bausch & Lomb Eyecare (India) Private Limited (B&L).

Satyam will support Bausch and Lomb's growth plans through implementation of integrated ERP solution based on Oracle Applications E-Business suite Release 11i as a back-office solution. It will support B&L's financial accounting, procurement and manufacturing requirements, a press release said.

Satyam's Oracle Enterprise Solutions Practice will provide solutions to B&L in areas like business support systems, operational support systems and decision support systems.

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L&T to set up 100 more RMC plants
Madurai: Larsen & Toubro (L&T) has plans to set up 100 more ready mix concrete (RMC) plants as the business would grow manifold in the coming years, senior L&T officials have said.

Addressing presspersons after inaugurating a fully automated RMC plant, set up at a cost of Rs3.50 crore at Gundur near Tiruchi recently, officials said that L&T has been manufacturing and supplying two million cubic metres of L&T concrete annually and the same would increase to five million cubic metres in the years to come as the demand would grow manifold in future.

The move to set up more plants in the next five years is to enable the company penetrate deeper into the existing market and meet the ever-increasing construction needs and customer specific applications.

The new facility at Tiruchi, eighth in the State and 40th overall, has a per hour capacity of 30 cubic metres and will cater to an area within a radius of 50 km from the plant.
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Toyota Kirloskar doubles production of higher-end Innovas
Bangalore: Toyota Kirloskar Motor has doubled the production of the higher-end models of its crossover vehicle, Innova. While earlier the higher-end models of Innova constituted 35 per cent of the total production of Innova, they have now been doubled to around 70 per cent.

The production scale up comes on the back of higher sales of the top-end models.

Innova has five variants and its price ranges from Rs6 lakh to Rs9 lakh. Innova has within a few months of its launch sold over 13,000 units. It now has 25,000 fresh orders.

Company officials said that the waiting period for Innova has been brought down to one month from five months. He, however, ruled out any price cuts to prop up the sales of the lower end models of Innova.
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Business Briefs: GAIL, Jet, Praj Inds, Seagate
GAIL pays 80 p.c. dividend
GAIL has decided to pay 80 per cent dividend on the paid-up capital, including 40 per cent interim dividend, which was paid earlier.

The company on Wednesday informed the Bombay Stock Exchange that the board of directors took a decision to this effect on Tuesday.

Jet repays IDFC subordinate debt
Jet Airways India has repaid the entire subordinate debt assistance of Rs400 crore availed of from the Infrastructure Development Finance Company (IDFC).

Jet has made the balance payment to IDFC towards its subordinated debt assistance, Jet informed the Stock Exchange, Mumbai (BSE) here on Wednesday.

Praj Inds. buys ethanol technology
Praj Industries Ltd, an ethanol supplier, has concluded the purchase deal for worldwide rights from US-based Delta T Corporation for molecular sieve dehydration technology for fuel ethanol production on a non-exclusive basis.

In 2001, Praj entered into an agreement with Delta T for technology transfer licence of a Molsieve-based dehydration process in select territories worldwide.

Hard disc drives from Seagate
Storage giant Seagate has announced the launch of ten new hard disc drives aimed at consumer electronics, enterprise, desktop and mobile computing markets.

The US-based storage giant had a 79 per cent share of the Indian hard disk drive market for the quarter ended March 2005, compared to 72.4 per cent for the quarter ended September 2004.

Among the products unveiled are a one-inch hard drive that can hold eight gigabytes of data and a 500-gigabyte capacity drive designed for digital video recording and home entertainment systems.
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