KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) – Indian iron-ore miner NMDC will increase its production by 14% to 35-million tons during current financial year, in line with a target of producing 50-million tons a year by 2018, a company official has said.

The higher production target for merchant sales is significant, as the miner also has to earmark production for its three-million-ton-a-year steel plant currently under construction, the official added.

NMDC will use it lease of Deposit IV at its Bailadila reserves in the central Indian province of Chhattisgarh exclusively to feed its integrated steel plant, which is slated to enter into production in the next financial year. Deposit IV is being developed at a cost of $300-million with a projected production capacity of seven-million tons a year.

The miner’s steel mill will require an estimated five-million tons a year of iron-ore, with the rest of Deposit IV’s production set to go into merchant sales, the official said.

The project is being developed by NMDC through a joint venture with the Chhattisgarh Mineral Development Corporation, the mining arm of the provincial government.

Meanwhile, the official said that NMDC has created a corpus of around $6-billion to be deployed for its long-term strategic growth plan, which includes achieving an iron-ore production target of 100-million tons a year and diversification into strategic metals.

This will include mining rare earths and beach sands and NMDC has already entered talks with the Atomic Minerals Directorate, a controlling agency for all strategic minerals, including atomic minerals.

NMDC’s plans to enter atomic mineral mining have been drawn up to be a step ahead of the government’s plans to open up the sector to private miners.

The Indian government has drawn up a list of 70 atomic mineral blocks in the provinces of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, to be put up for auction where private miners will be permitted to submit bids. The government reckons that opening up the sector, which until now has been the exclusive domain of companies under the Department of Atomic Energy, will attract attention of private miners particularly for the production of monazite.

As for its overseas acquisition plan, the official said that NMDC had invited tenders for appointment of consultants and auditors to help it identify diversified mineral assets overseas, conduct due diligence and evaluate financial viabilities on its behalf.