National Mineral Development Corporation

National Mineral Development Corporation

Type	State-owned enterprise Public (BSE: 526371, NSE: NMDC)
Founded	1958
Employees	5,652 (2009)
Website	www.nmdc.co.in

The NMDC limited (BSE: 526371, NSE: NMDC) is a state-controlled mineral producer of the Government of India. It is fully owned by the Government of India and is under administrative control of the Ministry of Steel.

It is involved in the exploration of iron ore, copper, rock phosphate, limestone, dolomite, gypsum, bentonite, magnesite, diamond, tin, tungsten, graphite etc.

It is India's largest iron ore producer and exporter producing about 30 million tons of iron ore from 3 fully mechanised mines in Chhatisgarh and Karnataka. It also operates the only mechanised diamond mine in the country at Panna in Madhya Pradesh.

Operating mines

• Bailadila Iron Ore Mine, Kirandul Complex
• Bailadila Iron Ore Mine, Bacheli Complex
• Donimalai
• Panna

Strong back up of an ISO 9001 certified R&D centre, which has been declared as the "Centre of Excellence" in the field of mineral processing by the Expert Group of UNIDO.^{[clarification needed]}

NMDC has made valuable and substantial contribution to the national efforts in the mineral sector during the last five decades and has been accorded the status of schedule-A Public Sector Company. The company has been recently categorized by the Department of Public Enterprises as "NAVA RATNA" Public Sector enterprise.

The story of NMDC is woven around the dreamy hills and the deep jungle land of Bastar in Chattigrah, known as Dandakaranya from the epic periods. The Bailadila iron ore range – "The hump of an ox" – in the local dialect, was remote, inaccessible and replete with wildlife. The range contains 1200 million tonnes of high-grade iron ore distributed in 14 deposits. The entire area was brought to the mainstream of civilisation by the spectacular effort of NMDC by the opening-up of mines. Today, Bailadila is a name to reckon with in the world iron ore market because of its super high grade iron ore. Bailadila complex possesses the world's best grade of hard lumpy ore having +66% iron content, with negligible deleterious material and the best physical and metallurgical properties needed for steel making.^{[citation needed]}

In the past, NMDC had developed many mines like Kiriburu, Meghataburu iron ore mines in Jharkhand, Khetri Copper deposit in Rajasthan, Kudremukh Iron Ore Mine in Karnataka, phosphate deposit in Mussorie, some of which were later handed over to other companies in public sector and others became independent companies.

NMDC is presently producing about 22.8 million tonnes of iron ore from its Bailadila sector mines and 6.98 million tonnes from Donimalai sector mines.

Because of its excellent chemical and metallurgical properties, the calibrated ore from Bailadila deposits has substituted the iron ore pellets in sponge iron making and hence became an important raw material for three major gas-based sponge iron steel producers like Essar Steel, Ispat industries Ltd and Welspun Maxsteel Ltd. In addition to these three, the entire requirement of the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant is also being met from Bailadila.

The demand for steel will continue to grow in the years to come^{[citation needed]} and this in turn would call for increased demand for iron ore. NMDC is gearing itself to meet the expected increase in demand by opening up new mines – Deposit-11B in Bailadila sector and Kumaraswamy in Donimalai sector and this would add in allowing the production capability to reach around 50 million tonnes per year 2014-15

NMDC is also diversifying into other raw materials for steel industry like low silica limestone. Production of Dead Burnt magnesite and further value addition is under study through its subsidiary J K Mineral Development Corporation Limited.

NMDC has taken over a Silica Sand mining and beneficiaton project from Uttar Pradesh State Mineral Development Corporation Ltd., The plant has been designed to produce high purity beneficiated^{[clarification needed]} silica sand of around 300,000 tonnes per year which is a raw material for production of float/sheet glass.

With a view to capture the opportunities now available following the NAVARATNA recognition and its expertise in the field of mineral exploration and mining, NMDC is venturing into development of high value minerals like gold, diamond etc., as joint ventures in some of the African countries.

A memorandum of understanding has been signed between NMDC, Indian Rare Earths Limited, (IRE) and Andhra Pradesh Mineral Development Corporation to establish a joint venture for the development of Bheemunipatnam Beach Sand. The project envisages mining of beach sands, setting up of mineral separation plant for Ilmenite concentrate and a downstream value addition plant for conversion of Ilmenite into synthetic Rutile/TiO2 slag/TiO2 pigment with pig iron as by-product.

NEWS

As per recent reports NMDC is planning to undertake overeas mining in Australia or USA.

External links

• NMDC website