India: JSW Group plans to invest US$1.49bn over the next 5 - 7 years at Salboni in West Bengal. The investment would involve setting up a 1320MW coal-based power plant, a 4.8Mt/yr cement plant and a paints factory.

The projects are due to come up in phases on 4300 acres of land acquired by the company for a proposed 10Mt/yr steel project way back in 2007. The steel project is in cold storage since JSW failed to secure iron ore linkage. Sajjan Jindal Chairman and Managing Director of JSW Steel said that JSW Cement will start construction of a 2.4Mt/yr cement plant at Salboni shortly.

"Bengal is likely to emerge as a bastion of JSW Group. We are drawing up plans to double the capacity of the Salboni plant. This is part of JSW Cement's larger plans to add another 10Mt/yr of capacity in next two years for US$300m. We entered the cement business in 2009 and now have 6Mt/yr of capacity at present, having managed to turnaround some of the units," said JSW Group's Parth Jindal said. While the Salboni cement unit will cost US$120m in the first phase, the expansion project to double its capacity will require anther US$105m of investment.

Sajjan Jindal said that the group plans to enter into a power purchase agreement with the government for two 660MW power plants at Salboni with an investment of US$1.19bn. He added that the group is also exploring the option of entering the paints business and is considering setting up a modern paints factory at the site. The group is keeping its options open on whether to acquire an existing paints business or launch its own business from scratch. The group is also looking at the possibility of setting up downstream steel processing units at the site at a later stage.