Vedanta to boost Sesa Goa iron ore capacity, restructure group

Mumbai: Vedanta Resources Plc proposes to increase iron ore capacity at its Sesa Goa unit eightfold to 100 million tonnes in five years as it restructures its business into three commodity focus groups, chairman Anil Agarwal said.

Sesa Goa, the country's top private sector iron-ore exporter, produced 12.4 million tonnes last year. It aims to reach 25 million tonnes production by 2010, for which Vedanta will invest $600 million-$700 million, Agarwal said.

Sesa Goa, in which Vedanta owns more than half, will reach a capacity of 25 million tonnes "in the short term", he said, adding, "The vision is to reach 100 million tonnes by five years and we are giving a lot of focus to exploration and increase the rate of production of the mines."

Vedanta Resources, meanwhile, is restructuring business into three commodity focus groups. The company will demerge alumina, energy business of Sterlite Industries, a CNBC TV-18 report said. The company will invest $9.8 billion aluminium capex programme and aims to raise aluminium smelting capacity by 2.6 million tonnes per annum by 2012, it added.

Vedanta will also transfer 79.4 per cent stake in Konkola Copper Mines to Sterlite. Sterlite shareholders will get seven shares of Malco for four shares held in Sterlite. On the other hand, Malco shareholders will get one Sterlite share for every 51 held. The scheme will be effective from 1 April 2009, the report quoted chairman Anil Agarwal as saying.

''We are looking to invest Rs115,000 crore for which we have already invested Rs40,000 crore. We have Rs30,000 crore in cash and we are going to invest Rs75,000 crore further in three years' time. We will have 1 million tonne of copper, 1 million tonne of zinc and 26 lakh tonne of aluminium. We have also kept a provision to acquire Asarco for $2.6 billion,'' CNBC quoted Agarwal as saying.