Stage set for IISCO Steel Plant to go on stream

Run-up to lighting of the blast furnace is slated for Nov. 25

Kolkata: FOLLOW STORY BY PRATIM: Workers are busy making the new plant of Indian Iron & Steel Company (IISCO) at Burnpur in Bardhaman district of West Bengal on Wednesday. The Indian Iron & Steel Company (IISCO), a SAIL subsidiary, was amalgamated with SAIL on 16th February 2006 and renamed IISCO Steel Plant (ISP). This full-fledged integrated steel plant is one of India?s oldest. Established as an industrial enterprise in 1918, IISCO produced iron from an open-top blast furnace at Hirapur, later to be called Burnpur in Bardhaman district of West Bengal for the first time in 1922. IISCO Steel Plant has initiated to build up a greenfield state-of-the-art integrated steel plant at its existing facility to expand its annual production capacity to about 2.5 million tonnes per annum. Photo: Arunangsu Roy Chowdhury. August 31, 2012.

The countdown has started for the lighting up of the blast furnace at the IISCO Steel Plant (ISP) of Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL), raising hopes of commissioning the 2.5 million-tonne per annum steel plant, which faced myriad trials and challenges since its conception in 2006.

Although it is being labelled as an expansion project, it is actually a Greenfield plant, which has come up on 953 acres in Burnpur almost adjacent to where smelting of iron through the blast furnace mode started in 1922. It is still operational.

The history of erstwhile IISCO is the history of the development of iron and steel in India.

After suffering delays of nearly four years caused by many reasons beyond its control (like finding tonnes of steel boulders in the soil), ISP, which was amalgamated with SAIL in 2005, is entering a penultimate phase.

Rs.18,000 cr project

In industry parlance, it is known as “initial start-up towards integrated operation of the steel plant.” This has started with a process called timbering, which began on Monday. This is the run-up to lighting of the blast furnace, which is scheduled for November 25. The project, whose cost is now being estimated at around Rs.18,000 crore, comprises 32 major packages and 47 auxiliary packages with almost all the major names in global steel and civil works being engaged on the job.

“Nearly 25 per cent of the delay was on account of a 300 per cent increase in piling work, necessitated by ‘discovery” of slag and metal boulders beneath the soil,” Executive Director in-charge Ishwar Chandra Sahu said. The additional earthwork also created problems in movement of heavy equipment, which also caused delays.

However, if there were challenges there were also innovations like allowing some of the readied plants to commence production, supplying the output to sister units.

Although majority of the land was with IISCO, it was not as if the project was totally spared of land woes either. A 300-acre acquisition needed for material movement triggered tension as the movement of a village deity was involved. All that may now be kept for posterity to learn lessons in project management.

It has also embarked on a recruitment drive to run the new plant. It is also reportedly progressing with a plan to set up another unit where the original unit now stands.