JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Multinational Indian mining, steel and power conglomerate Jindal Steel & Power has officially launched its new Jindal Africa head office, in Johannesburg, marking the company’s fifth year of activity in South Africa and creating a springboard for its penetration into other Southern African countries.

Affirming his belief in the country’s status as the gateway to Africa, Jindal Steel & Power MD and CEO Ravi Uppal said at the launch on Friday that the company’s core competencies were in sectors central to the needs of developing States, such as South Africa.

“This is why we feel we can share our expertise with the continent. We’ve spent the last five years determining Africa’s needs and now the stage is set for us to take the next frogleap and expand our footprint.

“We also know the aspirations of developing countries and that we need to meet the needs of the have-nots. Our business model attests to this,” he remarked.

The Jindal group, which boasted operating profit of over $18-billion in 2012/13 and was the fourth-largest company in India, based on assets, first entered the South African minerals sector in 2008 when it bought the mothballed Kiepersol colliery, in Mpumalanga, which now produced around 1.5-million tonnes of anthracite a year for steel manufacturers, including ArcelorMittal South Africa, Samancor and Evraz Highveld Steel & Vandium.

Jindal Africa was also currently advancing a 20-million-tonne-a-year opencast iron-ore mining operation, at Melmoth, in KwaZulu-Natal, which offered a several-billion-tonne magnetite resource.

“We are still driving the due diligence and it will be a while before this operation becomes a reality, but we are confident of a high-grade iron-ore product suitable for steelmaking,” commented Jindal Africa CEO Ashish Kumar.

While concurrently advancing its South African operations, in 2009, the group expanded into Mozambique, starting development of the envisaged ten-million-tonne-a-year Chirdozi coal mine, in the Moatize district, which boasted a proven reserve of 700-million tonnes and an expected life-of-mine of 25 years.

The mine currently produced some three-billion tonnes a year of coal, with the second phase of production aimed at enabling it to yield in excess of ten-million tonnes a year of high-grade coal from 2015.

Elaborating on the company’s expansion plans in Mozambique, Kumar said Jindal had outlined an extensive infrastructure development strategy to enable the transport of product from the mine to the port, which would involve either the development of a rail line between Moatize and the Port of Beira, or the construction of a coal slurry pipeline.

“The prefeasibility studies for both of these options have been completed and we will advance one of these two alternatives,” Kumar commented.

Jindal had also received environmental-impact assessment approvals for the construction of power plants in the country able to produce up to 350 MW.

In Botswana, the group was also currently advancing a coal project in the Mmamabula coalfield – an extension of South Africa’s Waterberg coalfield –which boasted coal reserves close to 2.7-billion tonnes.

A mining licence application for the mine had been submitted and discussions around the potential for the mine to supply energy to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) were ongoing.

“We have been shortlisted as an independent power producer supplier for Botswana and are in advanced discussions with energy utility Eskom regarding South Africa grid supply,” noted Kumar.

Elsewhere in the SADC region, Jindal had acquired licences and started exploration for iron-ore and manganese on tenements in Namibia with potential consolidated iron-ore reserves of several-billion tonnes.

The group was also exploring unspecified opportunities in Cameroon, Gabon, Madagascar, Tanzania, Zambia, Liberia, Senegal, Mauritania and Sierra Leone.

Jindal’s African ambitions were underpinned by its objective of producing 9.5-million tonnes a year of steel, generating 11 140 MW a year of power and manufacturing 4.5-million tonnes a year of steel pellets by 2020.