Indian steel giant JSW Steel subsidiary JSW Utkal Steel has been allotted 2,950.31 acres of land for building a greenfield integrated steel plant in Jagatsinghpur, Odisha. The project will have a crude steel capacity of 13.2 million tonnes/year, Kallanish notes.

The land parcel is located closer to the Paradip port in Odisha. According to JSW’s regulatory filing, its subsidiary requires a total land of 2,950.31 acres, of which 2,677.80 is forest land. The remaining non-forest land of 272.51 acres was previously allotted to JSW Utkal Steel by the Odisha state government. 259.95 acres of the non-forest land was leased as of 4 August 2022 and 12.56 acres were leased on 30 November 2023.

Capital expenditure for the project amounts to INR 650 billion ($7.82 billion) and will be deployed in a phased manner. The project phase work is set to begin once the land is handed over to the company.

The new plant also plans to sell up to 14.8m t/y of iron ore pellet, 380,000 t/y of direct reduced iron, 3.63m t/y of hot rolled coil, 1.18m t/y of plate, 3.98m t/y of cold rolled flats and 2.8m t/y of long products on the merchant market.

The land was previously earmarked for South Korean steel major POSCO to build a 12m t/y plant. However, the project was later abandoned due to local protests, land acquisition challenges and delayed environmental clearance (see Kallanish passim).

JSW Utkal Steel is a wholly owned subsidiary of JSW Steel. The subsidiary received environmental clearance for the new plant in 2022, which was then re-validated in 2023 by the Union Ministry of Environment & Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC).

JSW’s consolidated crude steel production in November 2023 was 2.204 million tonnes, up by 11% year-on-year.