Business Standard reported that till mid December, the monitoring committee appointed by the court has conducted 16 E auctions and put up 14 million tonne of iron ore for sale.

Of this, 10 million tonne were sold and JSW Steel picked up 6.6 million tonne. JSW’s Vijayanagar plant bought 5.9 million tonne, the Salem plant took 448,000 tonnes and JSW Ispat won 304,000 tonnes. However, the three companies got a delivery of only 2.7 million tonne.

Mr Vinod Nowal director and CEO of JSW Steel said that “Due to logistical reasons we could take a delivery of less than half of what we bought at the auctions. The state government has allowed the movement of iron ore from 6 AM to 10 PM and this restriction has affected our production schedule. It would be difficult for us to resume normal production without the continuous movement of ore.”

He said the company would resume normal production by the end of January. Presently, it has achieved a capacity utilisation of 80% at its 10 million tonne per annum steel plant at Toranagal in Bellary.

(Sourced from BS)