Nippon Steel and Tata Steel Sign Agreement on JV

Nippon Steel and Tata Steel signed memorandum of understanding of establishing the joint venture, which manufactures automotive cold rolled sheet, in Nippon Steel’s headquarters on Tuesday.

Nippon Steel and Tata Steel agreed to establish the joint venture investing 51% by Tata and the joint venture establishes continuous annealing line, which has 600,000 tonnes of the capacity per year, in Tata’s steel works in Jharkhand, India spending 30-35 billion yen.

The firms aim to start the operation until the end of March 2013 to meet the growing demand of high grade automotive steel sheet in India. The firms plan to establish the continuous galvanizing line and the cooperation in upstream operation.

Mr. Shoji Muneoka, the president of Nippon Steel, Mr. H.M. Nerurkar, managing director of Tata Steel and the executives of the firms attended the ceremony on Tuesday.