MELBOURNE, June 3 (Reuters) - GFG Alliance, a privately held conglomerate run by the UK's Gupta family, said on Monday it has linked up with Chinese energy company Shanghai Electric 601727.SS to build a solar farm in South Australia state.
The 280 megawatt (MW) Cultana Solar Farm project would power GFG's Whyalla steelworks, which plans to expand to 10 million tonnes of steel output a year from 1.2 million tonnes at present, it said.
GFG did not put a price tag on the solar plant, but said it was part of a promise made by GFG Chairman Sanjeev Gupta to spend $1 billion in renewables in Australia.
GFG is regenerating the aged steelworks, which it bought from administrators in 2017. Gupta has said he would consider a partial listing of the company's steel assets across the UK, Europe and Australia in the second half of 2019. Solar Farm ... will deliver globally competitive renewable energy on a large scale to power heavy industry," Gupta said in a statement.
GFG said it plans to invest in up to 10GW of large-scale solar and other renewables projects across Australia.
($1 = 1.4384 Australian dollars)