Jindal Steel made an offer to the troubled Italian Steelmaker to about €4 billion ($4.2 billion), seeking to outbid rivals from Azerbaijan, people familiar with the matter acknowledged.
Jindal’s latest proposal to the Italian government offers a payment of about €1 billion for the asset, along with around €3 billion to revamp the main steel plant in Taranato, according to sources.
Ilva, one of Europe’s largest steel producers, has been dragged into many controversies and disputes for years. The company is now under a state-administration regime, and the Taranto plant has operated at a reduced capacity.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government is set to select a winning bidder in the coming weeks. The tender for steelmaking assets, including the Taranto unit, was initiated after a dispute with operator ArcelorMittal resulting in the state reclaiming control.
The plant’s blast furnaces are currently running at a rate of about 2 million tons a year. However, the government has been looking for investors to provide sufficient funding to restore production as close to the plant’s peak annual capacity of 10 million tons.
Narendra Kumar Misra, Jindal’s director of European operations, told the Italian daily Il Sole 24 Ore that the company had previously proposed a €2 billion investment. The plan included the phased shutdown of blast furnaces and the construction of two electric arc furnaces along with a direct reduced iron (DRI) plant,aiming to produce 6 million tons of steel annually.
However, the current proposal, according to reports, shows that the payment for the assets will include approximately €500 million in cash and around €500 million in inventories.