NMDC seeks consultants to spur overseas acquisition plans

KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) – After a brief two-year hiatus, the acquisition of overseas mineral assets is back on the radar of India’s largest iron-ore miner, NMDC.

Stung by low international prices of iron-ore and the protracted process involved in securing iron-ore blocks at home, which prove to be speed-breakers to rapidly ramping up mining volumes, NMDC is seeking domestic or international consultants/advisors to assist in the next round of overseas acquisitions.

The miner seeks to appoint four sets of consultants in specific domains as transaction advisors, technical consultants, tax and accounting consultants and legal consultants to enable it to cover every specific area that an acquisition could entail.

According to a notice issued by the company, the consultants will be engaged for a period of two years with provisions for an extension of another year depending on the job mandate and the requirements of NMDC.

“The responsibility [for] coordination and rendering a comprehensive solution for a target acquisition will be the primary task of the financial/transaction advisors,” the company notice states.

The fresh impetus for overseas acquisition is linked to the miner’s stated objective of ramping up its iron-ore capacity target to 75-million tons a year by 2018 and further to 100-million tons a year by 2021. For the current financial year, NMDC expects to mine 35-million tons, up from 28-million tons achieved in 2015/16.

Over the past few years, it has been widely reported that the iron-ore miner is sitting on a corpus estimated at $2.62-billion to fund overseas acquisition and expand its mining portfolio beyond iron-ore to include rock phosphate, copper, limestone, diamond, coking coal and beach sand.

However, until now, NMDC’s prized acquisition overseas has been picking up a majority stake in Legacy Iron Ore Limited, in Australia, in 2014, in two tranches of 50% and 30%, involving investments of A$19.89-million and A$12.3-million respectively.

While no specific information is available on NMDC’s latest round of acquisition interests, industry sources hint that it is interested in an iron-ore asset in Brazil and coal assets in Russia and Mozambique.

It was recently learnt that NMDC completed due diligence on these assets about a year ago, and that investment decisions are pending before the company’s board of directors.