AS PART of a new strategy for India, ArcelorMittal today said it will build, to begin with, smaller steel plants in India’s states of Jharkhand, Orissa and Karnataka instead of mega units as proposed earlier.
The company, however, maintained that it is committed to expanding the capacities of the steel plants later on as stated in pacts with the respective state governments.
“The idea is to set up small steel facilities instead of (big) steel plants so that we have more footprints and we can execute faster some of these ideas,” ArcelorMittal CFO Aditya Mittal told in a conference call, after announcing the company’s third quarter financial results.
“We are focusing on land acquisition as well as mining licenses (at present),” Mittal said. The company is in the process of acquiring land in Karnataka and Jharkhand and is going slow with regard to the Orissa project.
Going ahead with the new strategy, the company may also look at acquiring small units in India and was reportedly in talks with at least a dozen firms for the purpose.
