IDCOL, IREL to explore beach sand minerals in Odisha

Bhubaneswar: Industrial Development Corporation of Odisha Ltd (IDCOL) and Indian Rare Earths Ltd (IREL) on Wednesday inked a MoU to form a joint venture agreement ‘IRELIDCOL’ to explore beach sand minerals.

The joint venture agreement was signed by IDCOL and IREL in the presence of Industries Minister Niranjan Pujari. IDCOL CMD Prasant Kumar Nayak and IREL CMD Debendra Singh signed the joint venture.

IDCOL will have equity shareholding up to 49% and IREL will have equity shareholding of minimum 51% in the JV Company.

It may be mentioned here that IDCOL had signed a MoU with IREL on 7th February 2015 regarding the formation of this JV Company.

The Joint Venture company will apply for a lease of beach sand minerals from Gopalpur to Brahmagiri area to explore and mine the same.

A mineral separation plant will be set up with an estimated project cost of 450 crores. Its construction period is about 24 months and a pay-back period is about 5 years. It will create employment opportunity for 400 people in different categories.

IDCOL has submitted applications for gaining mining rights for around 5,995 hectares of land along the Ganjam coast. The IREL has mineral separation units in Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

Initially, IDCOL had plans of undertaking sand mining in 1,257 hectares of land. The estimated reserve, in the proposed area, consists of more than 100 million tonnes of heavy minerals- mostly untapped.