NMDC eyes acquisitions in lithium, copper, critical minerals; talks on in Australia and Indonesia for coking coal assets

Amitava Mukherjee, CMD, NMDC Ltd

NMDC is eyeing acquisitions across 10 mineral assets abroad. These include coking coal in Australia and Indonesia, and 9 other critical minerals like lithium, copper, cobalt, nickel, bauxite, gold, among others. The company is also exploring critical mineral block acquisitions in Africa, and offices have been opened in Dubai to facilitate these acquisitions.

Some direction on acquisitions is likely within this fiscal, and depending on the size the miner could explore market borrowings to fund its acquisitions and take forward its nearly ₹70,000-crore capex projects, Amitava Mukherjee, Chairman and Managing Director, NMDC Ltd, said during a post-results investor call.

According to him, the Board has sanctioned overseas acquisition plans, with a three-pronged strategy in place.

The strategy includes targeting exploration stage assets – where NMDC will be investing in mineral block mapping, development, mining and commercial use of resource – where risks are high and costs are relatively lower; the second being tapping into pre-production stage assets (or mineral blocks) where risks are low but acquisition or investment costs are high; and third being picking up stakes in companies that have operational mines overseas, with zero risk and extremely high acquisition costs.

In case of coking coal or met coke assets – a key steel-making feedstock – the target would be picking up operational mines; while in case of critical minerals like lithium, it would prefer to pick up assets at an exploration stage.

“Our diversification policy is clear…. we will be looking at 10 minerals only, of which met coke or coking coal is the most important one. We are negotiating across geographies, including in Australia and Indonesia, on the coking coal where we would prefer operational assets,” he said during the investor call.

“Coking coal is one of the minerals which we have been mandated to look at very closely and acquire,” Mukherjee added. India’s coking coal imports are in the 55 million tonne range annually – amongst the highest globally.

According to him, in case overseas acquisition materialise in the near short term, the company “could explore the possibility of tapping market borrowing options”.

“Considering our expansion plans beyond India, one call has to be taken in about a year or year-and-half from now that do we leverage our balance sheet even for our domestic expansion plans. That is a call we need to take, but not today. Once our evaluation of a couple of properties abroad are finalised and we are able to have some number to those particular tie ups that we are going to have….only then can we take a call,” Mukherjee said.

₹70,000 crore capex plans

NMDC’s capacity expansion plans continue to be on track he said. And the company is eyeing doubling iron ore sales to 100 million tonnes by FY30.

In FY25, production and sales both were around 44 mt.

Board approvals for ₹28,000-crore expansion plans are already in place, and clearances for another ₹12,000 crore worth of projects should be through “in the next couple of months”. Another ₹30,000-odd crore worth of projects are in the planning and drawing board stage and DPRs would soon be prepared and presented. Most of the capex would be from internal accruals “as of now”.

The company reported a turnover of ₹23,668 crore, an 11 per cent increase from ₹21,294 crore in FY25. Profit before tax (PBT) before exceptional items rose by 12 per cent to ₹9,296 crore year-on-year, while profit after tax (PAT) stood at ₹6,693 crore, up 19 per cent y-o-y.

Published on May 28, 2025