Tata Steel expects to complete the amalgamation of Neelachal Ispat Nigam Ltd (NINL) with the company during the current financial year, a move that could unlock its proposed ₹40,000 crore expansion at Kalinganagar in Odisha, according to Tata Steel Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer Koushik Chatterjee.
“The amalgamation of NINL with Tata Steel remains on track for completion this financial year,” Chatterjee said, according to a report by Press Trust of India published by Business Standard. The process is subject to final approval from the National Company Law Tribunal, which is scheduled to hear the matter later this month.
NINL’s assets were acquired by Tata Steel through its erstwhile subsidiary Tata Steel Long Products for ₹12,100 crore. The transaction brought the state-owned steel company’s 1 million tonnes per annum steel manufacturing unit into Tata Steel’s Kalinganagar-linked operations.
The NINL facility is located around 5-10 km from Tata Steel’s Kalinganagar steel plant. Tata Steel plans to add approximately 5 million tonnes of capacity at the facility through a long-products expansion. The company has placed the estimated cost of the expansion at ₹40,000 crore.
Tata Steel Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director T V Narendran recently described the proposed project as another 5-million-tonne expansion in Neelachal, located in the Kalinganagar industrial region. The project is intended to expand long-products manufacturing capacity, although the supplied report does not provide a detailed construction schedule, financing structure or commissioning date.
The NINL transaction was significant in India’s steel sector because the company was the first state-owned steel company to be privatised by the Narendra Modi-led government. The acquisition also connected Tata Steel’s existing Kalinganagar operations with an additional manufacturing asset in the same industrial area.
The proposed merger therefore has an immediate administrative and corporate milestone before the expansion can move ahead: the NCLT’s decision on the amalgamation. Until that approval is secured, the ₹40,000 crore plan remains linked to the completion of the statutory process. Tata Steel, which has an annual crude steel capacity of 36 million tonnes globally, has not disclosed further implementation details in the information available.
