Tata Steel Ltd on Thursday announced a 50:50 joint venture with Australian steel producer BlueScope Steel for setting up metallic coated steel production facility.
An agreement to this respect would be officially signed at a ceremony later this month, Tata Steel said.
The joint venture company operating in India and South Asia will manufacture zinc/aluminium metallic coated steel, painted metallic coated steel and rollformed steel products, besides pre-engineered buildings and other building solutions.
It will construct a new, state-of-the-art metallic coating and painting facility at Jamshedpur at a cost of around Rs 900 crore (Rs 9 billion), Tata Steel informed the exchanges.
The new facility, equipped with a metallic coating capacity of 250,000 tonnes and paint line capacity of 150,000 tonnes annually, is expected to be operational by mid 2008.
It would also undertake the ownership and development responsibility of BlueScope's three rollforming and PEB manufacturing facilities at Pune, Chennai and New Delhi.
The proposed JV would be instrumental in offering a range of branded steel products for building and construction applications, including the premium Zincalume and Colorbond coated steel, Lysaght rollformed steel products and Butler PEBs.