JSW Steel seeks secure raw material supply with potential Australian coal mine stake purchase

19 Mar 2024 , 10:34 AM

According to news reports, JSW Steel is in negotiations to pay between $750 Million and $1 billion for a 20% share in Australia’s Whitehaven Coal’s Blackwater coal mine.

One of the region’s biggest open-cut producers of metallurgical coal, the mine is located in Queensland’s Bowen Basin and is projected to produce 14.8 Million tonnes of marketable metallurgical coal on average each year over the following five years.

The development has not been verified by JSW Steel. 

Prior to this, Whitehaven Coal had declared that it would offer international steelmakers a 20% share in the mine with the goal of enlisting them as strategic joint venture partners.

The first round of offers is due by mid-March, according to the corporation, and the winning bidder’s identity will be revealed on April 2 or later. The Indian company AvidSys Group, based in Australia, and the Japanese trading companies Itotchu, Marubeni, and Sojitz are among the other interested parties.

To safeguard its supply of coking coal, JSW Steel has been aggressively looking to acquire mines both locally and abroad. An earlier attempt to purchase up to seventy-five% of the metallurgical coal business of Teck Resources, a Canadian company, failed. In order to improve the supply of coking coal, the firm is now investigating a number of options, including acquisitions and strategic alliances.

By FY25, JSW Steel hopes to grow its production capacity to 37 Million tonnes annually, and by 2030, it wants to reach 50 MTPA. This will require more raw resources, like coking coal. The company intends to expand by adding 8.5 MTPA in total this year, increasing its overall capacity from the present 28.2 MTPA to 36.7 MTPA. It presently runs 13 mines, and in 2023 it won two coking coal mines and seven iron ore mines through government auctions.

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