The iron ore stock position of the Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited, the corporate entity of the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, continues to be critical with no improvement in the supply of the raw material from the Bailadilla mines belonging to the National Mineral Development Corporation.
Though the supply of rakes on the Kirandul-Kothalavalasa railway line was suspended following rock fall near Anantagiri last month, the NMDC is now supplying rakes from the busy Rayagada-Vizinagaram line. The Railways had already clarified that it was arranging rakes as per the indent placed by the NMDC in the past three months.
“The amount due to NMDC by RINL has to be settled to increase the indent for supply of rakes,” sources in the Railways told The Hindu . The present stock of iron ore will last two to three days.
The Railways said it had supplied 96 rakes in September, 87 in October and 72 as on November 27 as per the indent given by the NMDC.
‘Production not hit’
Scoffing at the talk that the RINL had stopped production at its shore-based steel plant, sources said they were getting two to three rakes (each carrying 58 wagons as against the normal requirement of five to 10 rakes per day to keep adequate buffer stock).
The RINL is also trying to get iron ore from the Orissa Minerals Development Corporation (OMDC), the Neelachal Ispat Nigam Limited in Odisha and the Donimalai mines in Bihar.
RINL Chairman-cum-Managing Director P. Madhusudan visited New Delhi on Wednesday to apprise the authorities of the gravity of the situation.
Sources in the RINL said the production in any of the three blast furnaces had not been hit. On an average, 17,000 tonnes of hot metal was being produced as against the normal production of 19,000 tonnes.
The target for current fiscal is to produce 5.5 million tonnes of hot metal.
