Essar group on Friday said it will invest Rs 10,500 crore (Rs 105 billion) in a special economic zone at Hazira and augment the steel manufacturing capacity to nine million tonnes, besides expanding the Vadinar refinery.
"Our investments in the SEZ at Hazira will be over Rs 10,500 crore," Essar group chairman Shashi Ruia said in Ahmedabad.
He said the group has been approached by major automobile groups like Nissan and component manufacturers like Manineto to set up facilities in its Hazira SEZ. Ruia also said international petrochemical giants had evinced interest for setting up base in its SEZ at Jamnagar. He said the group would build
a similar SEZ in Vadinar and also expand and diversify the petroleum refinery.
"We will also create infrastructure for petrochemical and chemical complexes and downstream and ancillary industries," he said.
The group last year commissioned a 10.5 million tonne refinery at Vadinar. Ruia said the refining capacity will go up to 14 million tonnes soon and further scaled up to 32 million tonnes in a few years.
Talking about the port in Hazira, the Essar chairman said, "We will expand the cargo handling capacity at our port to 35 million tonnes to cater to the increased requirements of industry, which will come up in our SEZ."