ArcelorMittal Cancels Huge Steel Plant in India

Luxembourg-based steelmaker ArcelorMittal SA has abandoned plans to build an $8.5 billion (€ billion) steel factory in the city of Keonjhar in eastern India.

The company says the project is "no longer viable" because of India's cooling economy and seven years of still-unresolved delays in lining up locally produced iron ore and acquiring land for the project.

ArcelorMittal, the world's largest steel company, intended erect a facility with annual capacity of 12 million metric tons of steel in Keonjhar. The company notes that its projects to build steel mills in Jharkhand and Karnataka, India, will proceed.

A day earlier steelmaker POSCO said it was abandoning plans to erect a $5.3 billion steel plant in Karnataka for similar reasons. The South Korean company declares it will continue plans for a $12 billion plant in Orissa despite delays acquiring land for the facility.