Mumbai-headquartered mining giant Vedanta plans to sell off Electrosteel Steels Ltd to focus on its core mining and industrial business and deleverage the balance sheet which had a debt of $11.7 billion at March-end, Economic Times reported on November 15.

Vedanta has said to have approached companies such as ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel (AMNS), Tata Steel, JSW and Jindal Steel and Power Limited.

Vedanta had beaten Tata Stee to take over ESL for Rs 5,320 crore in June 2018. Electrosteel was the second steel company to see the completion of the insolvency process after Tata Steel took control of Bhushan Steel in the same year. The acquisition was also Vedanta's foray into the steel business.

In December 2018, Vedanta pumped $4 billion into Electrosteel to scale up its capacity from the 1.5 million tonne per annum to 7 mtpa.

In May this year, the Kolkata bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) directed the lenders of the company to consider the claims of the clutch of operational creditors. It observed that to balance the interests of all the stakeholders, the payments to the various classes of operational creditors who have been paid nil value, need to be ‘reassessed’ and ‘re-considered’ by the Committee of Creditors (CoC).

One of the reasons for selling the business, as cited by the report is concerns over a worldwide recession and additional stress on commodity costs.