Essar Steel wins bid for Ghorhaburhani iron block

Bhubaneswar: Essar Steel has emerged as the successful bidder in the first e-auction of iron ore block in Odisha, upstaging strong contenders like Tata Steel, Jindal Steel & Power Ltd (JSPL) and JSW Steel.
“We had notified for the e-auction of Ghorhaburhani-Sagasahi iron block on 23rd December last year against which seven parties had submitted their technical bids and all of them qualified”, Mines director Deepak Mohanty said.

Seven steel firms, including Tata Steel, JSPL, JSW Steel, Essar Steel, Bhushan Steel Ltd, Bhushan Power & Steel Ltd and Rashtriya Ispat & Nigam Ltd (RINL) had submitted technical bids.

“The second phase e-auction was conducted on March 2. We allowed the five technically qualified bidders to take part in the e-auction. After an 11-hour long bidding process, Essar Steel India Ltd emerged the highest bidder with an offer of 44.35%.The government has now approved the highest bid of the Essar Steel India and we declared the major steel maker as the preferred bidder. Now, the company would have to give 44.35% of its sale proceeds, in addition to the royalty,” Mohanty added.

The Ghorhaburhani-Sagasahi iron ore block offered for e-auction is at G2 exploration stage and located in Koira sector in Sundargarh district. The block, with deposits of 99.54 million tonne, has been reserved for integrated steel plant as end user and mining lease (ML) will be issued to the successful bidder.

The mineral concession area is spread over 139.16 hectares (ha) including 20.88 ha of forest land, 110.69 ha of government land and the balance 7.58 of ha private land. Survey of the mineral block has been done by the Geological Survey of India (GSI).