Coal Ventures Ltd (ICVL) has announced receiving the first shipment of coal from central Mozambique at the port in Visakhapatnam in eastern India.
The news of the shipping to the Indian state-owned International Company comes after ICVL acquired concessions in Mozambique from the Anglo-Australian company Rio Tinto in October this year.
Anglo-Australian Company Rio Tinto has 65 per cent stake in the Benga open cast coal mine – the only operational mine out of the three concessions and producing five million tones a year. The others are Zambeze and Tete East projects, all in Tete province. Tata Steel owns the remainder of the 35 per cent.
International Coal Ventures (ICVL) said the current shipment symbolizes the commencement of establishing a long term and reliable source of more coal from the country.
Five Indian state-owned firms own ICVL. These are Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL), Coal India Ltd, Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd (RINL), NTPC Ltd and NMDC Ltd. The aim of setting up ICVL was to acquire assets abroad to guarantee secure supplies of cooking coal for the Indian steel industry.
SAIL and RINL will need 25 million tonnes per year of coking coal by 2015 in order to support their increasing steel production. This amount will need to be imported.