NMDC Ltd plans to spend ₹70,000 crore in in the next three years to expand domestic operations, install slurry pipelines and explore 10 minerals including lithium, gold and coking coal abroad, a top executive said. The state-run miner also plans to set up a subsidiary at Gujarat’s GIFT City, which will anchor its overseas businesses.
NMDC, which primarily mines iron ore, will also explore minerals such as lithium, cobalt, manganese, bauxite, nickel, copper and gold in its international ventures, chairman and managing director Amitava Mukherjee said in an interview. The focus will be largely on Africa, Australia, Southeast Asia and South America.
Currently, projects worth around ₹43,000 crore are in the pipeline, including sanctioned projects and those under consideration of the board. They include project expansions, new domestic projects as well as investments in overseas projects that may be through acquisition of new and running mine projects, or partnership with equity, including revenue and minerals share agreement. Projects worth another ₹30,000 crore are being planned by the company which the board is expected to take up and approve within this fiscal.
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“We have also defined the entire process in terms of evaluating and taking up assets and projects abroad. There are various models—we are agnostic about the models. It also depends on the seller. If he is exiting that asset, I can look at the asset (for acquisition). Somewhere, it will be equity stake with off-take agreements, somewhere it will be a joint venture (JV) sort of a thing. The policy also approves of various sorts of models,” he said.
About three to four international assets are in the final stages of evaluation, including iron ore and lithium mines, he said.
Under its diversification strategy, NMDC aims to earn at least 10% of its revenue from non-iron ore businesses and at least 10% from outside India, the CMD said. The company has formed a process to evaluate and take up assets and projects abroad to expand its global footprint. The company already operates a subsidiary in Australia called Legacy Iron Ore Ltd.
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NMDC will set up a subsidiary in the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City), Gandhi Nagar, Gujarat in the next three months, which will act as a holding company for its international business, Mukherjee said. It will also house the country-level and asset-level subsidiaries planned by the company for international operations.
“We are opening a subsidiary in Gift City. And then, we will have a country-level subsidiary, and then we will have an asset-level subsidiary. The formalities are underway, and it takes around three months to be completed,” he said.
If finalized for implementation, the investment plans for these projects would be sanctioned within the current financial year, with a target to complete them within three years.
The Hyderabad-headquartered company’s capex plans include two slurry pipelines connecting its iron ore projects in Kirandul and Bacheli in Chhattisgarh and the other connecting its Nagarnar steel in Chhattisgarh to RINL’s steel plant in Vizag, Andhra Pradesh.
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In FY25, NMDC’s (formerly National Mineral Development Corp.) net profit rose 19% to ₹6,693 crore from ₹5,632 crore in the previous financial year. Its revenue from operations last fiscal was ₹23,668 crore, 11% higher on a year-on-year basis. It produced 44 million tonne iron ore in FY25, against the target of 50 million tonne. Now, the company has set a target of 55 million tonne production for the current fiscal year.
