Tata Group Continues Expanding Presence in South Africa

Tata Steel KwaZulu Natal (Pty) Limited (Richards Bay, South Africa), a subsidiary of Tata Steel (Jamshedpur, Jharkhand), recently commissioned a new briquette plant in the industrial port of Richards Bay at the company's ferrochrome smelter facility at the same site, reports Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, TX).

A briquette is a block of coal dust, sawdust or wood chips, and charcoal that is used to fire up furnaces. The briquette technology is being used in a ferrochrome plant for the first time in South Africa. All other ferrochrome producers in the country use pellets as agglomerates. The technology is considered to be more environmentally friendly than all other agglomeration technologies. The briquette will be fed into furnaces along with lumpy ore, coking coal or charcoal, lime and other minerals to produce ferrochrome.

Stan Larkan, mayor of the uThungulu District Municipality where Richards Bay is located, inaugurated the plant. During the inauguration ceremony, he expressed his gratitude to the Tata Group for setting up the plant there and said it will help to alleviate some of the region's unemployment.

The first furnace of the plant, with a production capacity of 151,000 tons per year, was commissioned in April 2008. The company sources high-quality chrome ore from India and other places and converts it into high-carbon ferrochrome here. The finished product is then exported to the company's global customers. Phase I of the plant is designed to produce 134,500 tons per year of high-carbon ferrochrome with a chrome content of more than 64 percent.

The Tata Group's business ventures in Africa are gradually increasing, and the company is already present in 11 countries in the continent. The group has been operating in Africa for more than six decades, although its presence in South Africa is just more than 13 years old. In 1994, Tata Africa Holdings was set up as a subsidiary of global trading company Tata International Limited (Mumbai, Maharashtra) with an investment of more than $100 million. The company is based out of Johannesburg, which now serves as the headquarters for all Tata operations in Africa. The major subsidiaries of Tata Africa are Tata Ghana Limited (Accra, Ghana), Tata Holdings Mocambique Limitada (Maputo, Mozambique), Tata Africa Services (Nigeria) (Lagos, Nigeria), Tata Africa (Senegal) SARL (Dakar Fann, Senegal), Tata Holdings (Tanzania) (Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania), Tata Uganda Limited (Kampala, Uganda), Tata Zambia Limited (Lusaka, Zambia), and Tata (Zimbabwe) Limited (Harare, Zimbabwe).

Among its existing business ventures in South Africa, Tata Automobile Corporation SA (Johannesburg) distributes and markets vehicles built by Tata Motors (Mumbai), manufactures bus bodies in Johannesburg, and is now considering setting up vehicle assembling facilities in the country. Both Tata Communications Limited (Mumbai) and Tata Consultancy Services Limited (Mumbai) have a relatively large presence in South Africa. The Tata Group has ventured into the telecom area, too. It has a major stake in the country's second national fixed line licensee, Neotel (Pty) Limited (Woodmead, South Africa). The Tetley Group Limited (Greenford, United Kingdom), a subsidiary of Tata Tea Limited (Kolkata, West Bengal), acquired a stake in tea company Joekels Tea Packers (Pinetown, KwaZulu-Natal). Another Tata Group acquisition is that of Magadi Soda Company (Magadi, Kenya) by Tata Chemicals Limited (Mumbai).

One of the newest projects being taken up involves setting up two new hotels in South Africa. The hotels are being set up in Cape Town and Johannesburg. Durban is a possible location for the next hotel. The hotel in Cape Town is already under construction. Tata's Taj Group (Mumbai, Maharashtra) already runs the luxurious Taj Padmodzi at Lusaka.

www.tatasteel.com