Tatas pick up 15% stake in Sydney firm

Tata Steel has picked up a 14.99 per cent stake in Sydney-based Riversdale Mining, which owns coal mines in South Africa and Mozambique. Tata Steel has steadily bought into Riversdale, listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, through its Singapore-based subsidiary Tata Steel Global Minerals Holdings. In a filing before the Australian Stock Exchange earlier this week, Tata Steel Global Mineral said it had acquired a 4.99 per cent stake in Riversdale through market purchases at an estimated investment of $41 million (Australian), or Rs 143 crore. When contacted, a spokesperson for Tata Steel declined to comment. The Singapore subsidiary of Tata Steel, the sixth largest player in the world in terms of steel making capacity, has been buying into Riversdale through market operations from September last year. By October, it had a stake of 10 per cent. Stock exchange data show it had spent $20.54 million (Australian), or about Rs 70 crore, in October to raise its stake from 7.29 per cent to 10 per cent. With the latest round of market purchases, the company has become one of the largest shareholders of Riversdale.
Passport Capital, Talbot Group and Merrill Lynch & Co are some of the other shareholders in the company. It is Tata Steel’s biggest ever investment in any mining company. The company had paid Rs 106 crore in October last year to acquire a 19.9 per cent share in Canada’s New Millennium Capital Corporation, an iron ore miner. Apart from the Benga coal mine in Mozambique, Riversdale has Zululand Anthracite Colliery in South Africa.
Tata Steel has been scouting for iron ore and coal to feed Corus’s operations in Europe.
Mozambique booty. Tata Steel’s association with Riversdale Mining dates back to August 2007 when it decided to acquire a 35 per cent stake in the Benga project. From then on, the Benga coal mine has increased its production and Tata Steel’s investment has reaped rich rewards.
Riversdale and Tata Steel plan to produce 20 million tonnes of hard coking coal from Benga, up from the initial 5.6 million tonnes. Apart from Riversdale and New Millennium, Tata Steel has an iron ore project in Ivory Coast and a limestone quarry in Oman. It also owns 5 per cent of Australia’s Carborough Down coal project in Central Queensland.

Source: The Telegraph