Sluggishness in market and surge in imports from China and Ukraine has hit the total turnover of Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited, corporate entity of Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, in the just concluded financial year.
RINL’s turnover for the year is put at Rs.11,718 crore as against previous year’s Rs.13,489 crore.
The Navratna company, however, has registered a record export sales of Rs.868 crore, the highest since its inception with a growth of 16 per cent over previous year notwithstanding nation’s exports registering a negative growth of seven per cent.
RINL Chairman-cum-Managing Director P. Madhusudan said on Saturday that they were expecting increase in turnover to Rs.18,000 crore during 2015-16 with an export business of Rs.1,000 crore taking advantage of the demand for steel for developing Visakhapatnam as a smart city and construction of capital region near Vijayawada.
He told reporters that due to opening of International Marketing Office in Colombo and plans to penetrate into markets of Middle East and African countries, they were confident of raising their exports to Rs.1,000-crore.
Mr. Madhusudan said under 6.3 million tonne expansion project, all major units of Stage-1 had been commissioned and under operation. The other units under Stage-2 such as special bar mill and structural mill were made ready in September last year and furnaces lighted up.
However, the commissioning got affected due to Cyclone Hudhud.
The special bar mill was commissioned on Friday and commissioning of structural mill is expected by May.
By-product plant of coke oven battery-4 was commissioned facilitating increase in coke production.
The CMD said they were successful in modernisation of blast furnace-1. Modernisation apart from improving the efficiency of operation will enhance the output by half a million.
RINL Directors D.N. Rao, T.K. Chand, P.C. Mohapatra, G.B.S. Prasad and T.V.S. Krishna Rao were present.
