Vedanta’s Sesa Iron Ore to make all its mines in Goa operational

“Out of the 21 (mining) leases granted to us by the government, 10 are operational have been ramped up since August, 2015. Post-October, we will have to ramp up the remaining ones,” Sesa Goa Iron Ore’s CEO Kishore Kumar said ahead of Vedanta’s AGM on June 29, in Goa.

Environment Clearance Limit for the company is 5.5 million tonnes spread over all the leases, he said. “It will be important for us to get our small leases also back in operation to achieve the limit. During the last financial year, our extraction was close to 3.2 million tonnes,” Kumar said.

 The mining industry in Goa had come to a standstill for more than two and a half years following a Supreme Court order to curb illegalities. Subsequently, the industry was in fear that it will lose trust of its buyers.

Kumar said the trust of the steel mills, who are buyers for Goa’s low grade iron ore is resuming partially. “Goan ore being low grade has a lower price. Also, it has got some value in terms of phosphorous material.

 It does help in a way in terms of marketing this product to China and we will continue to have that edge of cheap raw material for Chinese steel mills,” he said.

The CEO said, “We are in a cyclical commodity business. We are going through a rough patch now.”