Riversdale Mining is being taken over by Rio Tinto but Tata Steel will continue to hold a stake in the coal mining company. B. Muthuraman the Tata Steel Vice Chairman said on Monday that the company would not divest its stake in the Australian miner currently being acquired by Rio.
He was speaking at a CII event in New Delhi when he said that Tata Steel was more keen on getting coking coal to feed its steel plants rather than making quick money by selling its stake in the Australian coal mining company Riversdale mining.
Tata Steel has a stake of 27.14% in Riversdale Mining and is the second largest shareholder in the company. Its subsidiary TS Global Minerals Holdings is the medium through which it hopes to remain invested in the company.
Rio Tinto earlier this month bought out the Brazilian steel company CSN from its 19.9% stake in Riversdale Mining. Now Rio Tinto has a 72% stake in Riversdale Mining. It has announced that it intended to extend the takeover offer for Riversdale Mining to April 29, 2011.
Tata Steel yesterday conducted the ground breaking ceremony for a Continuous Annealing and Processing line project worth six lakh tonne per annum. The CAPL project is being undertaken by Tata Steel in agreement with Nippon Steel to set up the first CAPL for production of automotive coal rolled steels at Jamshedpur.