HYDERABAD | May 05, 2015:

A record yield of 3.11 lakh tonnes of barytes was mined from Mangampeta Barytes mines in Kadapa district during April this year, the highest ever quantity in the last four years, according to the AP Mineral Development Corporation Ltd.

The Corporation would make all efforts to step up production in tune with the requirement of domestic and export market and earn additional revenue, it said in a release here on Saturday.

The APMDC has entered into an MoU with the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation in the recent conference on Industry Mission and Industrial Development Policy 2015-20 in Visakhapatnam to set up an industry for upgrading the quality of barytes mined from Mangampeta.

The inferior barytes mineral could not be marketed or exported in its present form and hence the joint venture to upgrade the quality of the mineral, said the APMDC officials. At present about 50 lakh tonnes of inferior quality barytes stocks were available. The MoU was to refine about five lakh to seven lakh tonnes of inferior barytes per year. After using part of the refined mineral by the ONGC, the rest would be exported to earn foreign exchange for the country, they said.

The APMDC also entered into another MoU with the Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd., for exploration of magnetite in a joint venture project with the stakes in the ratio of 51:49. After the clearance from the Union government, the rights over the mineral would be transferred to the joint venture project in accordance with the Mines and Mineral Development and Regulation Amendment Act, 2015. The mineral thus extracted would be supplied 100 per cent to the RINL for its requirement.

Both the MoUs were signed in the presence of Chief Minister N.Chandrababu Naidu in Visakhaptnam during the conference on Industry Mission, the release added.

(Source: http://www.thehindu.com/)