Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited, the corporate entity of Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, will save ₹400 crore per annum from 2018-19 once it completes capital repairs on three blast furnaces.
“The saving will be in lieu of reduction in import of coal on producing hot metal from the blast furnaces. We are in the process of administering pulverised coal injection on all three blast furnaces to increase their efficiency as part of modernisation undertaken at a cost of ₹4,000 crore to increase our capacity from 6.3 million tonne to 7.3 million tonne,” RINL Chairman-cum-Managing Director P. Madhusudan said on Sunday. He told reporters on the occasion of the 35th Formation Day of RINL that the work on modernisation of BF-3 had already been completed. The work on BF-1 had just started. The company would save 150 kg of coal on producing one tonne of hot metal.
Stating that by increasing the efficiency parameters, they would narrow down the net loss this fiscal. The company had incurred a net loss of ₹1,421 crore during last fiscal. Stating that RINL faced several twists and turns during its journey as a premier steel-maker in past 35 years, he said after avoiding BIFR threat and glut situation, now it was poised to overcome adverse market condition due to flooding of domestic market with cheap steel from China and economy slowdown.
Exports
Mr. Madhusudan said due to dedicated efforts by the workforce, they were smooth sailing this year. The company is now operating at four million tonne capacity. The mobilisation of ₹.9,000 crore out of ₹12,300 crore 6.3 million tonne expansion through internal accruals was a big plus point for them, he pointed out.
On exports, he said at present they were focusing on increase of their presence in neighbouring countries like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The company has a turnover of ₹1,000 crore from exports. Their focus is on increasing exports to the Middle East, South Africa and other countries.
